“Mom, you can’t leave him like this,” Belle reminded me. “It is kind of funny when you think about what he did to you last spring. But we need him today to drive us around.”
“We need both of you, Mom.” Shara looked like she was going to cry, more from the thought of losing her dad than for any punishment she might receive for her exercises in curiosity.
“I don’t know how I transformed him in the first place,” I wailed.
“Okay,” Jason said thoughtfully. “Dad tells us to think it through. Remember every thought, every gesture, down to the deepest motivation in your heart just before you did whatever you did.”
“Then back it out. If you circled clockwise with the spoon, you have to go counterclockwise this time. If you thought Alakazam, you have to say Mazakala.”
I held my spoon up before my eyes, forcing myself to think it through, every horrible second of my temper out of control.
“Um, Belle and Shara, your father left some of his clothes in the back of my closet.” Actually, I’d noticed more and more of his clothes showing up there after every visit, like he was planning on coming home again.
My anger at his audacity welled up.
Jason urged his sisters back into the house while I pulled a reluctant G out of the greenhouse. He blinked at me. Was that truly love I saw in his eyes?
I had been gazing malevolently at those wonderful blue eyes and the thick mane of dark hair just before I struck him with the spoon.
I hadn’t been singing when I hit him. I’d been incoherent with anger that he’d infected me with magic and that he’d never truly loved me. He’d only used me.
So I conjured up thoughts of how deeply I’d loved him for many years. Magically induced or not, I did love him, and his children, and the home he’d given me. And the greenhouse he’d built for me.
Finally, I imagined an appreciation for the magic he’d pulled out of the deep recesses of my soul. Magic that my parents had forced me to repress with promises of hellfire and damnation—or imprisonment in an insane asylum with electrical shocks to my brain to cure me.
One strong wallop with the spoon on his butt and the sparkles rose around him like a million fireflies. Black fur gave way to naked skin. His legs twisted away from the backward knees, and his hooves spread into feet and hands, elongating into fingers and toes.
I admired the elegant form of his human body a moment until he straightened up and looked around, blinking in bewilderment. He didn’t seem to notice that he was as naked as the day he was born.
Twenty-Four
“THAT WAS INTERESTING,” G said over the breakfast table. “I remember everything, but it was like a heavy curtain wrapped around my self-control. I could do anything and everything I wanted without hindrance or rules. Quite liberating. But not something I want to repeat again soon. Or ever.” He plucked at the worn chambray shirt Jason had found for him in my closet and looked puzzled. He’d barely touched the scrambled eggs, toast with jam, and coffee I’d thrown together for all of us.
It was going to be a long day.
“I figured casual clothes, for you, are a disguise. No one will recognize you at the Saturday Market,” Jason replied to the unasked question. Then he let loose the chuckle he’d been holding in for the last half hour.
“It’s a sad thing when a man loses the respect of his children.”
Shara snorted her orange juice and spent many long moments mopping up the mess with every paper napkin she could reach.
“I think you did that when you slept with the bimbo. Where was it? At the Jasmine Palms, I bet. That’s where all the football players talk about taking their dates,” Belle supplied for all of us.
“Work related and not what it looked like,” G said, sitting up straighter and looking down at all of us with his best quelling stare.
“Looked like fun to me,” Jason said.
G blushed. I’d never seen him so . . . uncontrolled before.
“About today. G, I think you and Jason should take the van and load it up with the baked goods. You can monitor the crowd at the market while I take Belle to the chess match. Shara stays with me, and I’ll help her with her homework which she has been neglecting this last week in favor of cracking computer codes and drawing mazes.”
“How’d you know!” Shara protested.
“I’m your mother. I have eyes in the back of my head.”
“In this family, that might be more than just an expression,” Belle grumbled. “I found a book that theorizes all the magicians in town have a fae ancestor or two, way back two hundred or more years ago.”
“Remember that when you bring home stray boys.” G pointed an accusatory finger at her. “But I can’t help out today. I have a dead psychic medium in Portland and a dying water witch in Sacramento. I have to secure their wands and investigate. That’s why I came to check on you at the shop. I needed to leave to investigate. But I wasn’t sure if I should take Jason with me or not. Let him learn the ropes of my job.”
I half caught the idea that he wanted to keep Jason close to protect him.
“You have to learn to delegate. That’s what you have deputies for,” I insisted.
“I followed a trail of dead bodies across Europe and the US hoping to catch D . . . er . . . our perp before she could harvest power stored in their wands. I’m not giving up on the investigation.”
“You aren’t giving up. You are saving valuable time by letting your deputies handle it. We know our perp has been around Eugene of late. If anyone at the Saturday Market has crafts and collectibles, some of them may have discarded wands from grandma’s attic, not knowing what they are. That’s what ends up at the antique mall. Right?”
“Yes. But . . .”
“Oh, Dad, stop being such a control freak and get with Mom’s agenda,” Belle admonished him. “Haven’t you learned yet that no one wins an argument with Mom?”
“Apparently, I’m not going to win this one,” he grumbled. “Give me a few minutes of privacy on the phone and then we’ll go. I figure I’ll need to make three or four trips in the van. Those rolling racks do break up into two parts to fit in the hatch, don’t they?”
“Got it covered.” Jason held up his own phone. “There will be six dancers with parents and appropriate SUVs and pickups at the shop to help transport in seventeen minutes.”
“Make sure you keep the cupcakes in the shade. We don’t want the buttercream frosting to melt. It may be cool now, but the sun will break through the clouds around ten. Temps pushing seventy-five by early afternoon.”
G looked at me strangely. “Weather witching as well as kitchen witching. And a late bloomer. How will I explain you to the Guild?”
“That’s not weather witching. It’s just experience and paying attention to weather forecasts,” I defended myself, still not comfortable with any of these “witch” labels.
“Yeah, right,” Jason said on an eye roll.
“Mom, I want to take my own chessboard today. I think I’m extending my wands into the white pieces. I need to use them as much as possible.” Belle rose from the table and cleared her plate and utensils. Automatically, she rinsed them and placed them into the dishwasher.
“Finish your breakfast, G, while I change out of these flour-laden clothes into something presentable.” I patted my back pocket to make sure my spoon was in place.
“Find a better holster for that, one that isn’t readily visible,” G ordered. “You look kind of strange carrying it in your back pocket in anything dressier than jeans.”
“Later.” I hoped for five minutes in the shower. My hair felt gritty and greasy. I hadn’t indulged in a baking marathon like that since the morning after I threw G out. Actually, this session was more intense, more productive, and longer.
Catharsis. That was the only word that described the experience.
Jason walked down t
he front stairs, carrying his shoes and fussing with the cork insoles. They helped a lot, but he was still not comfortable in real shoes. He wanted his feet in contact with wood as long as possible before a long day on his feet at the market. At least the market would be on a grass field and not cement or linoleum.
The sound of his father’s voice barking into his phone in his old office, now Mom’s craft room, brought him up short. “Why is the FBI calling me?”
FBI?
Jason pressed his ear against the door, letting the sound vibrations resonate with the wood and attune to his ear. Dad sounded like he was speaking loudly right next to him. And the other voice . . . at the other end of the mobile phone transmission was distant but quite discernable.
“The IRS called, asking us to investigate more than just tax fraud. Maybe international money laundering. Since you know the man in question, we thought this might fall under your jurisdiction.”
“I appreciate the interagency cooperation, but I’m not an accountant. I wouldn’t know what to look for.”
However, Belle was a wiz with numbers, almost magically so. Jason was willing to bet that if his sister got a quick glance at a ledger, she’d pinpoint irregularities without even thinking hard.
He wondered if his dad thought the same thing as he paused before replying. “I may have a file to send you. But the source is not verifiable. When I have confirmed the accuracy of the information, I will send it to you.”
“If the man is using . . . um . . . skills that are your jurisdiction, couldn’t you spot them?”
“Maybe. Look, I have a difficult and busy day ahead. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open. Then I’ll call both you and the IRS to tell you what to look for.” Dad sounded exasperated, impatient, and . . . wary. Maybe even afraid.
The man on the other end of the phone line rattled off some names and numbers. Jason heard a stylus tapping a screen making notes. If he listened just a little bit more closely, he might be able to tell what letters and numbers Dad recorded or what file he stored them in.
The sound of a body shifting in a chair signaled the end of the conversation and the eavesdropping.
Jason patted the wooden door and whispered, “Thank you.” Then he scooted into the kitchen to receive more instructions from Mom.
The conversation nagged at him like the tricky timing in the “Ritual Fire Dance.”
Not the timing. The reference to “interagency cooperation.” Who did Dad work for in truth? The Guild, of course. But who gave him the authority to investigate with or for the FBI and the IRS? A black ops US agency?
“G, if D’Accore is stripping old wands to regain her power, does that mean she’s absorbing different talents?” I whispered into my phone on the edge of the chess tournament crowd. I tried to keep both Belle and Shara in sight, but milling and growing numbers of onlookers kept getting in the way.
“Possibly. We are in uncharted territory here,” he replied. He must have eavesdroppers nearby. Or he’d learned by experience to never discuss his business in a public place.
“If she’s stripping the wands, why are you finding her castoffs in antique malls and flea markets?”
“She may have discarded them as unimportant. But there is always some residue. That’s why we have to burn the leftovers, to make sure the energy dissipates back into the world.” He sounded as if he were walking, moving behind something that acted as a sound barrier.
“Then we don’t know what powers she has absorbed and can throw back at us.”
“True.”
Shara showed signs of restlessness. I needed to get through fifteen people to grab her before she found something more interesting than spelling practice.
Then I spotted BJ. He hadn’t been over to the house much since Belle uninvited him to her party. He and four friends made a wedge, pushing through the crowd, oblivious to bruised toes and elbows to ribs. He scowled constantly. The bell on his keychain rang continuously.
All five of them made a beeline for Belle.
“G, get over here fast. I think we have trouble.”
“Jason . . . ?”
“Bring him if you have to. Just get here in the next two minutes!”
“Oh, my God! She’s here, Daffy. D’Accore is here. I have to stay. Do what you have to do. I’ll clean it up later.”
As usual, he was elsewhere when I faced trouble with the kids. I had to invent a solution to five bullies out to do mischief to my daughter. I knew of only one thing I could do with my wooden spoon, my wand. I shouldn’t turn them all into toads in public.
The crowd that had gathered to observe Belle battle it out with a wizened curmudgeon from the university began muttering at the boys’ rude intrusion. Murmurs turned into shouts of protest as the boys slapped people aside. One broad gentleman made a point of standing in their way with fists bunched and raised. BJ lifted his keychain and rang the bell three times. The man’s face fell slack and he stared, unblinking, into the distance. BJ walked around him, followed by his phalanx of minions.
So not good.
I grabbed Shara, stuffed her tablet in her backpack, and thrust it at her. “Stay with me.” I pointed toward Jason’s best friend who had suddenly become a menace.
Belle finally noticed the disturbance in the usually silent crowd of watchers. I watched her reach for her hair sticks. BJ’s head reared up and he focused on the ornaments.
Uh-oh. He now knew what and where her wand was.
“Shara, do you have your key?”
“Of course! But what can I do against them?” Her pointing finger trembled. She sensed the danger just like I did.
“Can you open the chain that holds BJ’s bell in place, make it fall? Maybe trample it in the dirt?”
She snorted. “That’s too easy.”
“Then do it. Now.”
“What about the other guys?”
“They are followers. If they have wands, they are too new and not comfortable yet.”
Shara dashed up to BJ and stood in front of him. He was about to knock her aside when she spoke. “What you got there, BJ? A bell. It has a nice tinkle. Doesn’t ringing it so much make you want to tinkle?” Audacious. But that’s my girl.
BJ looked startled and dropped his gaze from Belle to Shara.
I used his distraction to dash over to stand behind Belle, brandishing my spoon.
Quicker than I could see, Shara pulled her key out from under her T-shirt, got it off the delicate silver chain necklace, and touched the bell with it. BJ’s wand fell to the ground with an atonal clank.
BJ’s mouth gaped. He dropped to all fours, frantically searching for his wand.
Shara, bless her heart, twisted the toe of her tennis shoe back and forth as if grinding something. Hopefully flattening that annoying trinket as well as burying it.
“What you gonna do with that spoon, Grandma?” one of BJ’s thugs asked. “Spank me with it? Ooooh, I’d like that.” He spun around and presented his butt to me.
I reached back to gain some momentum and heard a sharp crack. My hand felt suddenly lighter.
Another of the bullies reached over my shoulder from behind and showed me the top half of my wand. He wore heavy gloves to protect him from the magic leaking out of the broken shaft.
“No, no, no, no!” Belle screamed as she grabbed her hair with both hands.
“Young man, take your hands off that girl,” the curmudgeon bellowed. “I’ll have you up on charges of malicious mischief and molestation.” Prudently, he pulled out his cell phone—one of those antique flip phones that didn’t do anything but make phone calls—and hit the panic button that automatically dialed 911.
Belle’s attacker yanked his hand away from her claws. But he came up with half of one hair stick, the pointed bottom half, devoid of the jade charm.
Belle chanted something, and the sharpened ivory tur
ned on the boy and stabbed his palm. He dropped it and ran with the others away from the sound of police sirens in the distance.
The curmudgeon grabbed his black chess queen and threw it at the boys. The one in the rear stumbled as it thunked him in the middle of his spine.
Belle had better aim. She sent a pawn directly into BJ’s exposed neck. He fell face forward into the turf, unconscious and bleeding.
Twenty-Five
G FOCUSED ON D’ACCORE. Tall and blonde as ever. New streaks of fire-red in her bobbed, bright gold tresses—artificial dye. She wore designer jeans with heels, a white dress shirt, and a leather jacket. She looked like she’d just walked off a fashion runway in Paris. Designer casual. Expensive designer casual.
Who was funding her clothes, her hair treatments, and her travel? The one person he now knew had the money.
And a motive. An old motive that had simmered for a long, long time.
G’s gut churned. He frantically sought Jason’s lithe figure among the slender dancers behind the table in their booth. At five-ten, headed for six-two, he was only average among his tall athletic friends. Then a dark-haired boy bobbed up. G sighed in partial relief.
D’Accore was three aisles away and examining some handcrafted jewelry. She held up a jade necklace, chunky flat stones in a pavé that would fill the space above a scoop-necked T-shirt. He bet it would cost her benefactor many pretty pennies.
She couldn’t see, yet she’d homed in on the most expensive piece of jewelry in the entire market.
He grabbed the opportunity of her distraction to pull Jason out of the booth and around the three-sided tent to the relative obscurity in the alley along the backs of this aisle of vendors.
“Dad!” Jason protested.
“Hush. My perp is here. I need to get you away. Now.”
“But . . .” Jason tugged his arm out of G’s grip and turned back toward his friends.
“No buts. The bake sale is going well. Your friends can handle it. Now come with me.” G reestablished his grip on Jason’s arm and led him toward the parking lot.
A Spoonful of Magic Page 18
