Spellbinder: A Love Story With Magical Interruptions

by Melanie Rawn

  Silent—until Susannah said, “So have you set a date yet?”

  Evan traded a startled glance with his intended. “How the hell—?”

  “I don’t know!” Holly wailed. “I didn’t tell her, honest!”

  Susannah smiled like a cat who’d gotten the canary, a can of salmon, and a bowl of cream for dessert.

  “Date?” Bradshaw asked, then tumbled to it. A grin spread across his face and he raised his glass. “Mazel tov!”

  “How’d you know?” Holly demanded of her friend.

  “If you insist on keeping secrets from someone who’s known you almost twenty years,” Susannah replied serenely, “you shouldn’t have the May issue of Bride magazine in your briefcase when you meet that person for lunch.” She downed her tequila and held out her glass for more. “So what am I wearing?”

  “‘Wearing’?” Holly echoed blankly.

  “I introduced you. I get to be a bridesmaid, don’t I?”

  “Best Woman,” Holly answered.

  “I like it,” Susannah approved. “So what am I wearing?”

  “A taffeta hoop skirt in the Clan McLeod tartan.”

  “Marshal, if they’re going to discuss weddings,” Bradshaw said firmly, “we’re going to go watch the game. Where’s the TV?”

  “Elias!” Susannah exclaimed.

  “Oh, let them go.” Holly shrugged. “We’ll pretend we’re domesticated and go putter in the kitchen like we know what we’re doing.” With a brief caress to Lachlan’s hand, she finished, “We’ll yell when dinner’s ready.”

  It was a little strange to be sitting on the big suede sofa drinking Scotch and watching a basketball game with Elias Bradshaw. But if things continued as it looked like they would for Elias and Susannah, there’d be plenty more evenings like this. It felt very … married: the women in the kitchen and the men watching the game. Truth be told, he liked it. He just wondered if he’d ever like Bradshaw.

  “Good call, Marshal,” Elias said as a commercial came on. He wasn’t talking about the game.

  “You called it first, Your Honor. ‘Quite a catch,’ I think you said.”

  Bradshaw took a long swallow of Scotch. “If you don’t treat her right, Susannah will come after you with a machete.”

  He tried to picture it. “Wouldn’t a pearl-handled switchblade be more her style?”

  “Huh. Don’t let that delicate little face fool you. She’s about as subtle as a hydrogen bomb when she’s pissed off.”

  “No wonder she and Holly get along so good.”

  “Yeah, they’re quite a pair.” Bradshaw contemplated his drink. “I’m not sure how it happened, but I think we both got lucky.”

  “I know how it happened,” Lachlan retorted. “They planned it.”

  Two minutes from the final buzzer, Susannah appeared in the doorway. “Evan, Holly says come make yourself useful and open the wine. Personally, I prefer a man who’s more decorative than utilitarian, but there’s no accounting for taste.”

  Bradshaw shook his head. “You see what comes of educating women?”

  “Uppity,” Lachlan agreed. “I’ll be there when the game’s over.”

  “That’s telling her,” Elias approved.

  Susannah put her fists on her hips. “You want to eat before midnight?”

  “If that’s when the game ends, that’s when we’ll eat,” Bradshaw replied.

  She gave him a disgusted look. “Don’t tell me—it’s a guy thing.” Turning on her heel, she left the office.

  Five minutes later, game over, TV off, and the scents of dinner drawing them inexorably to the kitchen, Lachlan and Bradshaw found the women guzzling vodka and tequila, seated at the breakfast bar gossiping about former classmates. The men found themselves completely ignored.

  “—hasn’t seen the kid in months and he’ll only be home for a week before college starts, but she tells him to go to his dad’s because it’s Date Night.”

  “Anybody who needs to get laid that bad ain’t getting’ laid that good,” Holly declared.

  Lachlan, seeing the blue gift bag on the sink counter, steeled himself. Apron donned, he went to the fridge for the two bottles of wine he’d bought for tonight, found the corkscrew, and performed his hostly duty. Practice, he told himself, for the Friday night in July when they’d take his father, sister, brother-in-law, nieces, and nephew out to dinner, plus three aunts from Boston. Compared to them, Bradshaw and Wingfield were a walk in the park.

  “You know, of course,” Elias said to Susannah, “that your fellow alumni are still gossiping about you two. After that exhibition you gave them last week—”

  “It was a karaoke bar, Elias,” Holly reminded him. Rising from the breakfast bar, she took the string beans out of the microwave and dumped them into a serving bowl. “We had to sing.”

  “And you had to sing that song, right?”

  Susannah smiled sweetly. “Would you have preferred ‘Drop-Kick Me, Jesus, through the Goal Posts of Life’?”

  “‘The Vatican Rag,”’ he retorted.

  “How about ‘Lawyers in Love’?” Holly inquired sweetly.

  Lachlan, filling an ice bucket from the freezer, bit his lip against a grin and shot a glance at Holly. She winked at him as she transferred Isabel’s stuffed pork loin to a serving platter. “Behave yourself, McClure,” he chided.

  On her way by with the platter, she bumped her hip into his. “That’s not what you said last night at about two in the morning.”

  He turned an accusing stare on Susannah. “You see what I gotta put up with? And it’s all your fault, too.”

  “Keep complaining, Evan—someday I might even buy into it. Which reminds me, Holly, you haven’t thanked me yet for playing matchmaker.”

  “I don’t recall hearing any heartfelt words of gratitude from you, either. She took dinner in, calling back over her shoulder,”After all, Lachlan was easy. With you and Elias, I accomplished the impossible!”

  That this was news to Evan must have been clear on his face. Bradshaw grimaced and took himself and his empty glass back to the living room bar.

  Susannah made a face at his retreating back, then turned to Lachlan. “She never told you?” He shook his head. As Holly came back in, Susannah turned an accusing stare on her. “You never told him?”

  “So I took you and Elias out to dinner. So sue me.”

  “Jesus Christ, woman, what’s wrong with you?” Lachlan exclaimed. “Never say that to a lawyer!”

  Susannah leaned across the counter and rapped her knuckles on his forehead. “Do you want to hear this or not? Last October third. She knows it’s Elias’s birthday. I know it’s Elias’s birthday. Even Elias knows it’s Elias’s birthday! She insists on taking us to dinner at Chanterelle—”

  “You didn’t even say Happy Birthday to me,” he complained. The first bottle gave up its cork; he started in on the second, telling Susannah, “And it doesn’t sound like you’ve got anything to bitch about. All I got was a hot dog.”

  “Didn’t want to spoil you too soon,” Holly shot back, and left with the salad.

  “Anyway,” Susannah went on, “there we sit, drinking and waiting for menus, while Holly blithers on and on and on, and Elias looks like thunder—and all at once her cell phone rings. It’s her publisher.” She pretended to be holding a phone to her ear. Evan reflected that to really do the sweet innocence bit right, the eyes had to be blue. “‘Walter? What’s wrong?’ She’s quiet for a minute, then gets this horrible frown on her face. ‘Calm down. You’ll live.’ More silence. Then the kicker—‘Okay, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Hold the fort, pour your best Scotch, and tell ’em the one about the new rabbi who didn’t know what to do with the foreskin after a bris.’”

  Evan choked. Walter had told him that one, and it was dreadful.

  “She stuffs the phone in her purse. Sorry, major crisis, don’t worry about the check, have fun—and leaves before Elias or I could get a word in edgewise!”

  “Devious,” Lachla
n observed, then added with a leer, “So did Elias have a nice birthday?”

  Susannah batted her eyelashes at him. “Let’s just say he got his present on his birthday—whereas you had to wait awhile.”

  “Jesus! Do you two tell each other everything?” When she just smiled, he grimaced. Turning in the direction of the dining room, he bellowed, “Holly Elizabeth McClure! Get your ass in here right now!”

  “Go play with yourself, Lachlan!” she shouted back.

  Susannah was whooping. “I love it! Evan Lachlan, Terror of the U.S. Marshals Service—laid low by a mere woman!”

  “First of all, she ain’t no ‘mere’ anything. Second of all, I get laid low, high, middle, and sideways, and that’s the only reason I put up with her.”

  “Yeah, Evan—I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t.” Susannah bit her lip, still giggling, then asked, “Low, high, middle, sideways—what about backwards and upside down? Is Holly slowing down? Or aren’t you that adventurous?”

  “Sometimes,” he answered sweetly, “I even get to be on top.”

  “She must really like you, then.”

  “There’s a rumor to that effect.” He crammed the bottles into the ice bucket as Susannah picked up the basket of bread. She slid her free arm around his waist to hug him.

  “I knew you two would be great together.”

  “So I guess this is where I finally get around to sayin’ thanks?”

  “You just be good to her. That’s all the thanks I want.”

  “Okay, then, fair’s fair.” He slung an arm around her slender shoulders as they walked into the candlelit dining room. “His Honor ever gives you any trouble, let me know. I carry a bigger gun than he does.”

  “Wingfield, you sneaky slut,” came Holly’s stern voice from the other side of a dozen of Elias’s roses, “get your mitts off my man.”

  Susannah jumped away from Evan as if they’d been caught in a guilty embrace. “Don’t hurt me,” she whimpered woefully, cringing behind the bread basket.

  “Eats my food, guzzles my tequila, slinks all over my fiancé—”

  Susannah responded with a bluesy song that Holly joined with high harmony. Bradshaw came into the dining room just as they were finishing the chorus, which advised a woman to be wise, keep her mouth shut, and don’t advertise her man.

  “They do this a lot, huh,” Evan said to Bradshaw as he removed the apron and took his seat at the head of the table.

  “Individually and as a team,” Bradshaw agreed, nodding his thanks as Evan poured him a glass of wine. “Trouble is, you never know when it’s gonna happen.”

  “Tell me about it.” He stuck the serving fork into the meat; Bradshaw held out his plate. “The first time it was the middle of Central Park.”

  “Christ, Lachlan, don’t give her any ideas!”

  Susannah rounded on him. “You think we just stick to karaoke bars?”

  “I only wish you would.”

  THEY WERE BACK IN THE living room with coffee and dessert when it happened. Susannah was at the bar, browsing Holly’s collection of single-malt Scotches, her back to the room—for which Elias sincerely thanked all the Deities he could think of—when Holly’s cat leaped from the hearth rug and howled. All eyes were on him as he landed, paused for an arching, hissing growl, and streaked from the room.

  “What in the world got into Mugger?” Susannah exclaimed.

  Bradshaw caught a glint from one corner of his eye. And turned. And saw a spark flash from the window—and another—and another, brighter this time, fierce and angry, an irregular pulse of amber light. Holly almost imitated the cat rising from her chair, the beginnings of panic in her eyes as she stared at the throbbing glass sphere.

  “Hey, Susannah,” Evan said suddenly, “come help me see what’s got Mugger’s tail in a fluff, huh? I know some of his hiding places, but not all.”

  Just as Bradshaw cast a warding in the general vicinity of the window—sloppy work, but it served to hide the witch sphere—Susannah walked from behind the bar to join Lachlan, saying, “Never figured you for a cat person.”

  He gave her a tiger-growl as he escorted her to the hall—hurrying her without seeming to, Bradshaw noted. “You take upstairs, I’ll take downstairs, and if we can’t find him we’ll borrow that little rat-dog from next door to lure him out. Mugger loves to beat the shit out of him.”

  Aware that he didn’t need the distraction of wondering what Lachlan knew or why he knew it, Bradshaw hauled Holly toward the window. “I need your help.”

  “It—it shouldn’t be doing that,” she managed, freckles standing out dark in her white face. “Nicky gave it to me less than a month ago—it should’ve lasted longer—”

  “Well, it hasn’t. Come on.”

  Together they stood before the window, the ward mostly protecting them from the sparking malevolence encysted by the sphere. Within the dark golden glass depths the pulsing continued, maddeningly random, like a heartbeat that had lost all life-giving rhythm. It leaked malice, and evil.

  Bradshaw dug into his pockets, wondering if he’d brought anything he could use, searched his mental library for something appropriate. The light intensified as his hasty ward faltered, every beat hammering at his eyes, his brain. Holly wrenched away from him, eluding him when he made a grab for her arm.

  But she wasn’t running away. Instead, she went to the unlit hearth and delved into the basket of firewood. “Oak or pine?” she demanded of him.

  He stared at her.

  “Goddammit, Magistrate, which one?” she snapped.

  “Pine,” he heard himself say, as his fingers closed around his key chain. From fat silver links dangled a lump of polished red jasper—his grandfather’s goodluck piece, it had seen the old man through World War One unscathed.

  Holly brought him a small log, wincing as she neared the fluctuating ward and the diablerie plucked at her again. Elias took her arm and pulled her as close as he dared to the sphere. And, as a hunting dog senses the unattainable presence of its quarry, within the amber glass the sorcery began to whine.

  Bradshaw picked at the wood to tease off a good-sized splinter. Words tumbled through his mind, associations learned long ago, Basic Defensive Magic 101: Red jasper—return negativity to its source—reversing—protective—barrier—The glass shivered from the inside out, light pounding furiously. Pine—countermagic —purification—exorcism—protection against evil—

  Holly stood beside him again, visibly trembling. She held one of the yellow roses he’d brought her, plucked from the vase on the coffee table. A thorn pricked her thumb, conjuring a single thick ruby of blood.

  Stone, wood, and blood combined with words that came to him with their usual suppleness. The orb emitted an anguished keening, one side and then the other bulging as light concentrated all its strength into a last attempt to burst free. It was like watching boils rise on shiny dark golden skin.

  And then it died.

  In the silent, blessed relief from that thrumming malevolence, Bradshaw swayed slightly against Holly. She pulled back from him, reaching to unhook the sphere from its chain, and cradled the cold, dead glass between her hands.

  “Who do you think it was?” Her voice was remarkably calm, and if he hadn’t glimpsed her eyes at that moment he would have thought her recovered from her terror.

  “I don’t know. Who hates you enough?”

  She gave a little shrug. “Maybe it was you they were after.”

  “In that case, the line forms on the right.” He looked around as Susannah’s laughter came from the hall. “Quick—”

  Wood back in the basket, rose back in the vase, Witch Sphere consigned to a cabinet drawer, they were waiting with impeccable nonchalance when Susannah and Lachlan came back with Mugger draped across the latter’s shoulders, digging in with all twenty claws.

  “Holly,” he complained, “get this furball off me, willya?”

  The next few minutes were spent coaxing the cat into Holly’s arms, where he licked her
nose several times before curling up tight against her. It was entirely clear that Mugger would not be moving anytime soon. Holly sat in a chair by the hearth, and said, “Would somebody pour me some coffee, please?”

  “What spooked him?” Susannah asked.

  “Who knows?” Lachlan made himself useful with coffee and brandy. “The air-conditioning probably twitched a curtain or something. He’s such a scaredycat, it’s embarrassing.”

  Mugger yawned, and Susannah laughed.

  Bradshaw made himself comfortable on the couch, Susannah beside him, while the little rituals of serving were performed. Lachlan made an efficient host, he had to admit—but there was something in the marshal’s eyes when he glanced Bradshaw’s way, something that had suspected, and now knew beyond doubt.

  Elias cast about for some harmless topic of conversation. Suddenly Susannah pointed a finger at Holly and demanded, “Why are men like coffee?”

  “Great! You got a new one! Okay, why?”

  Purring, she replied, “The best ones are smooth, dark, hot, and can keep you up all night long.”

  Holly groaned. “All right, you deserve this one. Why are men like parking spots?” She waited a moment, then said, “The best ones are taken and the rest are handicapped.”

  Lachlan grinned. “Why are women like the weather?”

  “I know that one,” Bradshaw said. “Women are like the weather because you can’t do anything to change them.”

  Susannah threw a pillow at him.

  Just as Bradshaw was beginning to think the conversation would be innocuous for the rest of the evening, Lachlan caught his gaze and said, “I’ve been meaning to ask—where’d you learn your magical Naranja?”

  “Oh, his parlor trick?” Susannah chuckled. “I’d heard rumors, but I never believed it until I saw it at the Sbarras’.”

  “College,” Elias said. “I don’t do card tricks or sleight-of-hand, though.”

  Lachlan nodded, smiling slightly. Bradshaw wanted to squirm.

  “Holly has a thing she does with fire,” Susannah said. “Salt, isn’t it? Or some kind of herbs. Something folksy and backwoods Virginian, anyway.”