Spellbinder: A Love Story With Magical Interruptions

by Melanie Rawn

  Nick had set the kettle on and was retrieving the special stash of China tea when something occurred to him. Slipping off his shoes, he soft-footed it up the stairs, careful to avoid the creak on the third-from-the-top, and eased open the door of Holly’s room. Sound asleep, right enough. He smiled, resisting the impulse to brush her hair from her cheeks, and found the black scarf she’d been wearing when she arrived last night.

  Back in the garden, he set down the tea tray and gave the scarf to Alec. “This might help. It’s hers.”

  “I married a genius. This is perfect.”

  After tea leaves were measured and water was poured, Nick tucked a foot under him and glanced over Alec’s preparations. The black velvet had been exchanged for the black silk scarf, and the stones were lined up at its edge. “That’s always been my favorite.” He pointed to the moonstone: milky white, about the size of a thumbnail, and carved with a moon face.

  “I like the aquamarine—summer blue, a hint of leaf-green. Like your eyes.”

  “Restrain your poetic impulses, please.”

  “That wasn’t poetic, that was romantic. Impulses to which you’ve never had in your life.”

  “You do it well enough—and often enough—for both of us, Alyosha.” Idly stirring the tea deosil with a silver spoon, Nick inventoried the stones. Apache tear, duskily translucent; solid black onyx; aquamarine, smoky quartz, and garnet; indigo-dark beryl and rose quartz that looked like child’s marbles. Green bloodstone, flecked with red that gave it its name; a lopsided chunk of golden amber. The malachite and carnelian matched each other, both being flat ovals. Moon-faced moonstone, and a tall, pointed phallic symbol of an amethyst, sliced off a geode.

  “Why are you using that one?” Nick asked. “Holly’s a girl.”

  “Who’s got man-trouble,” Alec retorted. “Hurry up and guzzle your tea. We wanted to do this at the same time, remember?”

  “It hasn’t steeped yet. What’s the rush, anyhow?”

  Alec only shrugged.

  They sat quietly for a time, until Nick decided the tea was ready and started drinking. Resisting the urge to gulp it down fast so they could get started, he asked, “Have you decided the question?”

  “How specific should we get?”

  “Let’s just think about Holly, and leave it open from there.”

  “Okay.” Alec put all the rocks back in their pouch, cradling it between his hands as Nick finished the tea. Nodding his readiness, Nick swirled the remaining spoonful of liquid in the cup three times sunwise, then turned it over onto the saucer. At the same time, Alec let the stones fall one by one onto the black scarf.

  East came up black, blue, and red: onyx, aquamarine, and garnet. “Ideas, inspirations,” Alec muttered. “Definitely a journey for creative purposes … a good trip, she’ll enjoy it … .”

  “That means Florence again,” Nick stated.

  “Hush. I’m concentrating. Devotion is there, but to what? A bit of aimlessness, I think—that’s it, travel for the sake of travel, to escape. We’ve got separation of lovers—no surprise—but I can’t tell whether it’s defensive to repel the darkness or if it’ll end up binding them closer—”

  “South,” Nick said. “Tell me what’s there.” Besides the malachite and the bloodstone—both green, the color of healing.

  “More travel. We won’t be seeing her for a while, Nick. But it will help her. She’ll start seeing things differently. That’s the bloodstone.” Alec propped his chin on one hand, staring at the Western quarter. “Here it gets tricky. Five stones, all clustered together—which one’s which?”

  Nick waited him out. Eventually there was a sharp nod.

  “The Apache tear is just that—grief. Which doesn’t take many smarts to figure out. But she’ll get past it if she looks inside herself. The amethyst is interesting—it’s the stone of atonement, but it also ensures faithfulness. And, as you so charmingly pointed out, it’s definitely a masculine stone—so he’s not going to stop loving her, Nicky. She’s it, for him.”

  “We knew that already.”

  “Yeah, well … his problem, and hers, will be to get beyond the anger. Ah, but then there’s the moonstone for rebirth.” He pointed to the Northern quadrant. “There’s her writing. Communication, creativity, confidence, success—”

  When he broke off, Nick leaned forward. “What? It’s the Center, isn’t it? What’s there?”

  “Profound confusion,” Alec replied, his voice deceptively light. “Stones in the Center are the negative or positive influence on the rest of the casting. Smoky quartz, overcoming depression with common sense. And carnelian to change your luck and protect from negative emotions. Both are good. But look where the two blacks are in relation to the Center. Black stones are always six of one and half a dozen of the other when it comes to positive and negative influence.”

  “English, please.”

  “She’s in for a bitch of a time.” After staring at the configuration for a few moments, he swept all the stones into his palm and stashed them in the pouch. “Your turn,” he said gruffly.

  Nick gazed for a moment at the Limoges stamp on the cup bottom for something to distract him from a sudden pessimism, then shook himself mentally. Distraction would not do. Upending the cup, he looked at the pattern of leaves.

  “Well?”

  “Patience.” Nick wished he didn’t see what he saw. “You tell me,” he said suddenly, holding the cup so Alec could look. “Is that an arch or a bridge?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Both are journeys, but the bridge is a favorable journey.”

  “It’s a bridge,” Alec decided. “Ties in with what the stones said.”

  “What else do you see?”

  Black brows arched, he peered dutifully into the cup. “Is that a mushroom?”

  “Sudden separation of lovers after a quarrel,” Nick said dully. “It’s close to the rim, which is the immediate future. The closer to the bottom of the cup, the more time will elapse before whatever it is comes true. See this, right at the bottom? It’s a kettle—there’s the spout.”

  “Looks more like a camel to me. Or maybe a swan. Or—”

  “Kettle. Who’s the Rom in this family?”

  “All right then, ves’tacha,” he said, using the gypsy word for beloved. “Tell me what the kettle means.”

  “Death.”

  HOLLY WOKE AT NOON, PULLED on clothes, and went downstairs to an empty house. A note on the coffeemaker read: Foraging for food. Back by 2. Love, Alec.

  He wasn’t kidding. Not moldy crust or curdled milk or yet a solitary egg was to be found. She settled for handfuls of cereal from a box best sold by FEB 97, taking coffee and a fresh pack of cigarettes out to the back porch.

  The ashtray was still there, overflowing. She thought over what Nicky had told her the night before—not about him and Alec, but the memory he had evoked of sewing their wedding quilt, back when her magic was new and felt good. Other people took joy and pleasure from their talent. She knew plenty of them, Alec and Nicky included. She tried to remember how that had felt, and couldn’t.

  Through childhood and adolescence, she’d been wrapped in cotton-wool. Going away to college, she might have expected to feel threatened, but her only insecurities were those shared by every freshman. Would she make any friends? Would she flunk out? And what about boys? Her magic hadn’t really been an issue. If she’d sensed herself different, it was because of her accent, her clothes, her relative poverty among the wealthy blue bloods, and all her goddamned freckles.

  She’d smoothed out the accent and learned to live with the freckles. She hadn’t even minded much when, during grad school at UCLA, the California sun popped new ones. (Although she’d been expecting to get a real tan, so that all the freckles sort of merged together; vain hope.)

  Back then she’d enjoyed magic. Healing, Banishing, Scrying, Grounding, Centering, Initiating, Mourning, Handfasting—she had participated in versions of them all and more besides, t
aking pleasure in the magic and her contribution to it. But she’d never really felt it. While others saw and heard and experienced and lived their magic, she stood by. Watching. She, who made it all happen with an intensity they never could have achieved without her, truly participated in nothing.

  At Woodhush, magic was in the quilts and the paintings, the herbs in her dresser drawers, the carvings on the furniture and lintels, the horseshoe above the barn door. Keep the last egg laid by an old hen as a charm to protect the poultry; always ask the faeries’ permission before taking a cutting from a hawthorn tree; myrtle, rosemary, and parsley grow best if planted by a woman; a saltcellar overset between two friends is a sure sign they would quarrel. Things were just things, ordinary and commonplace, in the way a New Yorker would hear on the TV that a demonstration at the U.N. was going to foul up his crosstown commute. Magic was as normal as oatmeal with cinnamon sugar on a winter morning.

  Even after Alec and Nicky came to Woodhush Farm and discovered what she was, Holly hadn’t truly known what she was until the first time she participated in a Circle, the first time she extended her finger for someone else to stick with a silver needle and her blood was the seal and the binding for someone else’s spell.

  But in the last few years it seemed to her that almost everyone in her life wanted her blood—literally or figuratively. Except Evan Lachlan. He was the only man in her life who didn’t want her to bleed.

  Nicky had been right, early this morning: all life was magic. Especially love. To her, it was the only magic that ever really worked. And she was damned if she’d give it up.

  A scrap of empty envelope in the kitchen sufficed for a note to Alec and Nicky: Gone home. Thanks for everything. Love you. Holly.

  JUST INSIDE HER FRONT DOOR was a sealed envelope with her name in his handwriting on the front.

  Her hands shook as she ripped open the envelope. His writing was clear, though the long tail on every y told her he’d written very fast.

  Holly—

  I don’t have words, not the way you do. All I can think of to say is that I can’t be with you. Nobody can help me with this. Not even you. If you’re here I won’t even take the first step, or if I do it’ll just be because I have you for a crutch. I can’t do that to myself and I won’t do it to you.

  This won’t be forever. I promise. What’s forever is that I love you.

  Evan

  Holly sat on the cold tile floor, his letter on her knee, and stared at nothing. It seemed about a year before she felt chilly, and shivered, and wondered what had happened to her cardigan.

  The door chimes made her glance up incuriously. She didn’t care who it was, because never again would it be him.

  “Holly? Come on, Holly, open up.”

  Susannah. Holly pushed herself to her feet, opened the door. “Come to view the corpse?”

  Susannah’s face was a study in compassion—and wariness. “Evan called a couple of hours ago. He said you’d probably need—”

  “What I need,” Holly enunciated carefully, “or, more properly, who I need, has just thrown me away like a dead cell phone. If you intend to join me in getting drunk, come on in. If not, shut the door on your way out.” Turning on one heel, she went to the living room for the bottle of Stolichnaya.

  “The usual,” Susannah said behind her. “The one with my name on it.”

  After she found the Cuervo Especial, she sliced two limes into wedges, put out a salt shaker for Susannah, and poured into cut crystal glasses. “Sláinte mhór.”

  They tossed back the liquor, coughed, wiped their eyes. Holly poured again while Susannah licked salt off the back of her palm and sucked on lime. After a moment Susannah raised her glass and said, “Men: may every single goddamned one of the motherfuckers rot in hell.”

  “Amen, sister,” Holly agreed, and they drank.

  “I should’ve called you in Kenya, I know,” Susannah began.

  “So I could come home and do what?” Holly asked pointedly, lighting a cigarette.

  Susannah did likewise. “God, that tastes good. Holly, I honest to God thought he was gonna be all right. I was stupid enough to believe that Evan would be fine. Sooner or later.” Susannah raked dark hair back from her eyes. “Then Fleming and his allies started yelling for his head. Pete threatened to resign if they fired him. Frank Sbarra called everybody he knows—”

  “And everybody else tried their best, including you and Elias. And now that I’m back, what would you suggest—that I write a letter to the editor?”

  “Cynicism isn’t really your thing, Holly. What you can do is be there for Evan.”

  “He doesn’t want me. Do you know what he said? That he had to do this on his own. That he can’t use me as a crutch. And he’s right, damn him. I hate him for it, but he’s right.”

  “Holly, he’ll come back to you.”

  “I told you—either drink or go away.”

  Susannah tossed back the tequila and held out her glass for more.

  “Good choice.”

  “I think I figured out why he did it,” Susannah said after a while. “I heard Fleming sermonizing to the crowd—toxic bullshit, really stirring them up. Evan got him down the steps, but he started yelling again. That’s when Evan slugged him.”

  “Lachlan doesn’t like preachers, with or without Roman collar.” Unwillingly, she remembered the day Elias had formally sentenced Father Matthew.

  “What the hell are you doin’ here?”

  “I love you, too, Lachlan.” She nodded to Susannah as her friend went past into the courtroom. “I’m here,” she said more softly, “because I wasn’t here before.”

  “Holly—you don’t have to.”

  Needing something to do with her hands, she straightened his tie. She’d watched him dress this morning, but until this moment hadn’t realized she’d matched her clothes to his. They both wore black suits.

  “I know you don’t need to me hold your hand,” she said. “But maybe I need you to hold mine, you know?”

  “I don’t want you even breathin’ the same air as that bastard.”A few moments later, though, some of the tension left his face. Briefly, gently, he touched her cheek with his fingertips. “Okay. Come on.”

  They stood unobtrusively in the back of the courtroom, Sitting behind the prosecution were a dozen or so women of varying ages, early twenties to late fifties. All were more than usually good-looking, and all of them looked bruised.

  The priest was brought in. Whatever allure this man might once have had, it was gone now. Remaining was an aging, nondescript nonentity who had hurt and warped and destroyed. She felt Evan tense beside her, every muscle rigid. She wanted to touch him and didn’t dare.

  “Before I impose sentence according to the arrangement made with the prosecution, does the defendant wish to make a statement?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.” He turned.

  Holly felt the long body at her side draw in on itself without moving a single muscle.

  “I want to tell everyone how sorry I am. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, and I’ll pray every day of my life for God’s.”

  For a moment his gaze lit on Evan, and then Holly—and he was interested. Despite where he was, what he had done, and that he would be spending the next twenty years in prison, be wanted her. She met him stare for stare—and the furtive, faded eyes flinched. His head turned—quickly, as if to avoid a raised fist.

  She glanced up at Evan, found he was looking at her, his eyes wide, startled. Only then did she realize that her lips had curved in a little smile. For the priest.

  Who had looked at her and flinched.

  Shaking her head, she slipped out of the courtroom. Gulps of cold water from the drinking fountain got the taint out of her mouth.

  “Holly?” Susannah came up to her. “Come talk some sense into him—he’s gone back to confront the man.”

  A quick walk through a side hall to the holding cell; slowly, careful to make no sound of breath or footstep, Holly went closer.
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  “Those women trusted you,” Evan was saying. “And you raped them. What gave you the right to do that?”

  Holly pressed her spine against a wall, unable to see Evan. His words were hoarse, roughened by pain and anger. Yet there was an entreaty deep in his voice, a tremor that begged for understanding of why this man had done these things.

  “God trusted you to help people. Instead, you helped yourself to as many women as you could, and when they didn’t want you anymore—how do you live with what you did?”

  Pete Wasserman entered the hall, giving Holly a glance and a nod before opening the holding cell. A moment later she heard him say, “Let’s go,” and the priest was taken away. Handcuffs and leg chains rattled. The watery gray eyes saw her, and the defiant lift of his head disintegrated into another flinch.

  She knew she wasn’t smiling now. She wondered what was in her eyes. She watched the priest being taken away, thinking, Evan’s been running for years—from you, his mother, his childhood, even himself sometimes—but it stops now. You can’t get to him without getting past me. And nothing will ever get past me.

  She walked toward the cell. Behind the iron bars stood Evan. He saw her, and very slowly his right hand reached out for her. She went inside. His fingers were chill, his grip almost painful. It was a long moment before he spoke.

  “Given the chance, you woulda killed him, wouldn’t you?”

  Her brows arched. “For you? Of course. Him or anyone else.”

  His lips curved in a flicker of a smile, and light returned to his eyes. “Good thing looks can’t kill, or I’d have to arrest you.” He squeezed her hand, his fingers warm now, alive. “You can be pretty scary, McClure.”

  “Never underestimate an Irishwoman in love, Lachlan.” She tugged at his hand. “Can we get out of here, please? We’re on the wrong side of these bars?”

  She remembered her vow of that morning: that whoever and whatever would injure Evan Lachlan must get past her first. But something had gotten past her, she reflected bitterly. Evan himself.