Magician's Muse

by Linda Joy Singleton

“You told me you were dating a guy from your fencing class. Evan doesn’t even go to your school.”

  “So I lied.” Jade shrugged. “No big deal.”

  “It is to me.”

  “I knew you’d overreact, just like you are now. That’s why I didn’t tell you.” Her words came out tough, but her gaze softened. “It’s not like I expected to see you here.”

  “I didn’t expect to see you, either,” I accused her. “Your last text said you had so much homework you were staying home this weekend—over a hundred miles away.”

  “And yours said you were going Christmas shopping.” She gave a sarcastic sweep of her arms. “Kind of far from the mall, aren’t you? Were you spying on me again?”

  I flinched at the “again,” since when I first learned Dad had a secret daughter, I’d spied on Jade.

  “I was not spying,” I retorted, lifting my chin as if I didn’t care what she said or thought of me. “I was at the DeMarcos’ and just happened to look out the window.”

  “The DeMarcos’?” Evan stepped toward me with a ferocious glare. “What were you doing there?”

  “Mrs. DeMarco invited me.”

  “You’re lying! She wouldn’t.”

  “Yes, she did. She’s worried about Josh and wanted my help.”

  “That’s crap. You’re the last person she’d want around—not after what you did.”

  “I didn’t do anything, except try to help—which is more than you’re doing.” A swift wind lashed against me but I stood my ground. “If anyone knows where Josh is, you should, but you haven’t told his parents.”

  “I’m not the one who drove Josh away.” Evan pointed at me.

  “Josh was the one who broke up with me—not the other way around!”

  “Getting defensive, are you? Well, you deserve to feel guilty. You pushed him too far. He had you up on this pedestal, insisting you were a sweet, wonderful girl. I warned him, but would he listen to his best friend? No, he believed you. When he found out I was right, that you’d been lying to him, he was destroyed.”

  “I never meant to hurt him. I tried to explain.”

  “Explain what? That you’re a lying, cheating bitch?”

  “Ev, that’s harsh.” Jade tugged on Evan’s arm. “Stop already and let’s go inside. I’m getting cold.”

  “I’m sick of everyone believing her lies.” Evan spit out the words. “Careful, Jade, or your twisted half-sister will screw you over, too. Do you have any idea what sick shit she’s into? Josh caught her summoning evil spirits at a séance.”

  I shot Jade a look, but she quickly glanced away without answering. Guess she hadn’t mentioned to Evan that my grandmother had arranged the séance for her. The not-at-all-evil-spirit who’d been summoned had been her beloved stepfather.

  “I had nothing to do with Josh’s leaving,” I insisted. “He left with Arturo.”

  “To get away from you.” Evan spat.

  I stumbled back, as if slapped. I didn’t believe that …

  didn’t want to believe it.

  “You’re to blame.” Evan tightened his hands into fists like he wanted to slam me. “And now you have the nerve to say I’m lying, that I would hurt my best friend’s family? His family is my family, too. You dated Josh for a few months but I’ve been his friend since we were kids. I went through hell with him after his brother died. I know him better than anyone.”

  “Exactly!” I exclaimed, pointing my finger right back at him. “You know him so well, you must know where he is.”

  “Shifting blame won’t get you off this time,” Evan warned. “I never told anyone at school about your freaky habits out of respect for Josh. I don’t have any reason to hold back now. I’ll tell everyone you’re a heartless witch.”

  “Lighten up, Ev.” Jade reached out, touching Evan’s arm. “Sabine is my sister.”

  “The half-sister spoiled princess you can’t stand. Isn’t that what you told me?”

  “Well … I didn’t exactly …”

  “Jade?” Hurt scorched through me. “You said that?”

  “Not in those … well … I didn’t mean to—”

  “What exactly did you mean?” I interrupted.

  “I plead the fifth.” Jade folded her arms across her chest.

  Her reply, which was clearly meant to remind me we shared the same attorney father, made me so angry I could hardly speak.

  Evan slipped his arm around Jade, pulling her close. “Let it go, Jade. She doesn’t matter. Nothing really does except bringing Josh back home.”

  The genuine sadness in his tone startled me. “You really don’t know where he is?” I asked.

  “If I did, he’d be back already.” Evan’s hostility slipped again and his aura flashed with sad shades of yellow and purple, as if his psyche was bruised. “If you really are psychic, look into your crystal ball or whatever freaky thing you do to find him.”

  “You don’t believe in psychics,” I said sarcastically.

  “I don’t, especially you. But Josh has been gone for too long and that’s just not like him. If you have some sort of freaky power that can find him, then go ahead and prove me wrong.”

  “I can’t just make things happen.”

  “Exactly what a fake would say.”

  “I don’t care what you think.”

  “You should,” he threatened with renewed hostility. “If Josh isn’t home by Christmas, I’ll make sure everyone at school knows about your black magic rituals and how you used voodoo to kill that football player at your last school. When I’m done, you won’t have any friends—not even that hot cheerleader you hang out with.”

  I wanted to argue that Penny-Love was my BFF and would stand by me no matter what. But I’d never told her about my psychic ability and she could be a little shallow when it came to popularity. I didn’t hold that against her, understanding too well what it was like not to fit in. Being psychic ruined my reputation at my last school, and all my friends—even my very best friend—had turned against me.

  And it could happen again.

  When Evan pulled Jade into his house, she wouldn’t look at me. She simply went along with him, proving that my first impression of her had been right. She might be half a sister, but she wasn’t even a fraction of a friend.

  The door slammed shut.

  Chilled inside and out, I wrapped my arms around myself. But no matter how tight I held on, emotionally I was falling apart. Evan had accused me of the thing I’d secretly feared; that I was to blame for Josh’s disappearance. If something terrible happened to Josh, it would be my fault.

  Slowly, I turned back toward the DeMarcos’ house, trying to figure out a way to make things right. I thought about what I knew:

  Josh had gone off somewhere with Arturo over a week ago.

  He hadn’t taken his phone, clothes, or laptop.

  He told his parents not to look for him.

  Evan didn’t know where he was.

  I had a vision of him in a rustic building with cloaked strangers.

  The knife. (Didn’t want to think what this meant.)

  I sighed, feeling even more confused.

  I’d only taken a few steps when I heard Dominic shout something from the DeMarcos’ backyard.

  Alarmed, I raced to the side gate and sprinted into the backyard. There was Dominic by the dog house. He turned toward me, a triumphant smile on his face.

  “Check it out.” He pointed to Horse, who stood up on his four gangling legs and wagged his tail as he ate from his dog bowl.

  “He’s eating!” I rejoiced.

  “Cool, huh?”

  “More than cool. You’re amazing.” I stepped toward Dominic, smiling. He opened his arms and I fell into them, holding tight. He hugged back with such warmth that my body temperature rose. We shared a look, sort of a bookmark to hold our place so we could come back to this moment when we were alone.

  Stepping away, I reached over to rub behind Horse’s ears. The dog wagged his tail and kept on crunch
ing his food. Dominic went over to the back door and called Mrs. DeMarco. When she came out and saw that Horse was eating, she gasped with surprise.

  “You did it! Oh my god, I can hardly believe it. You’re a miracle worker!” she told Dominic.

  “I didn’t do much.” Dominic shrugged as if embarrassed. “Keep an eye on him and give him a lot of attention, and he should be okay.”

  “I can’t thank you enough,” she said. She offered to pay Dominic what she would have paid a veterinarian, but Dominic refused.

  “Seeing this dog healthy is enough for me,” he said.

  We said our good-byes, then left the backyard.

  I climbed into Dominic’s truck and fastened my seat belt. I was feeling great until my gaze drifted to the Marshall house again. Then all Evan’s accusations rushed back, ruining my mood. Jade and Evan together, united against me. God, I hated Evan. He was more toxic than an infectious disease. Jade would be sorry, too, because he’d dump her like all his other girlfriends. Evan (nicknamed “Moving On Marsh”) had a rep as a player with a new girlfriend every week.

  Dominic suggested we get something to eat, so we drove to a roadside taco truck. There were about half a dozen other cars parked in the graveled lot, which meant reasonable prices and great food. I swung open the car door and, my feet crunching on gravel, inhaled the mouth-watering aroma of carne asada, rice, and beans.

  The line was long but the service quick. We returned to the warm, cozy truck and unwrapped our breakfast burritos. Dominic turned on the radio, switching it from his usual country station to my preferred alt rock station.

  Biting into my burrito, I studied Dominic, thinking how being together felt so right and longing to freeze-frame this moment. He’d changed so much in the short time we’d known each other, his wall of reserve and suspicion coming down. He’d opened his heart up to me and I’d fallen inside.

  A little red sauce dripped down Dominic’s arm, and as he wiped it off, I admired his tanned, rough hands. It still surprised me how gently those callused fingers could caress my skin. Rough and gentle—that was my Dominic.

  “Thanks,” I told him simply.

  “For what?” He arched his brow.

  “For being you.” I folded the burrito wrapper and tossed it in the garbage bag hanging near the truck’s dashboard. “Not many guys would have dropped everything to help their girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend’s dog.”

  Dominic shrugged. “Not a dog’s fault who owns him.”

  “Animals always come first with you,” I teased.

  “Not only animals,” he said, with a smile that made me wish we were alone in a romantic hideaway, not sitting in a truck cab in public. “I came today because you asked me to.”

  “I know, and it means a lot to me.”

  “You mean a lot to me.”

  Our eyes connected. Feelings swelled inside me in deep sweeping currents. I reached across the seat and squeezed his hand, imagining being with him alone … and much more. But this wasn’t the time or the place. So I took a deep breath and shifted the conversation back to safe territory.

  “You were great with Horse,” I said in a casual tone. “But I nearly gagged when you ate the doggy kibble.”

  “To be honest, I was faking,” he admitted, grimacing as if remembering something painful.

  I got a flash of the younger Dominic, chained outside and bruised from beatings by his uncle. The only food his uncle had given him was dog food—which he’d refused. I’d seen this memory already and knew Dominic had suffered horrible indignities before running away. I still didn’t know everything he’d gone through, but I knew enough to understand why the one thing he would never eat was dog food.

  “Well, what you did was impressive,” I said in a cheerful tone to lighten the moment. “Mrs. DeMarco said you succeeded where all those vets failed. She would have written you a big check—you could charge a lot as a dog miracle worker.”

  “When everything is about money, life is not worth anything. Like Emerson said: money often costs too much.”

  “But you’ll need money for your horse-shoeing business,” I argued, always impressed when Dominic quoted famous dead people. Not only was my boyfriend hot-looking and considerate, he read literature for fun. “You’d rather work for yourself than someone else, and extra money could start up your business.”

  “I don’t take money for helping a friend.”

  I knew he didn’t mean Mrs. DeMarco. Horse was his friend. Placing my hand gently on his arm, I nodded to show I understood. “I’m just glad Horse is better.”

  “But he might relapse if Josh doesn’t return.” Dominic started the truck and gravel sputtered as we pulled onto the road. “Horse is anxious about Josh.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Yeah, although not in actual words. In a mind-picture he showed me his leash and Josh, which meant he missed going for walks with Josh. Then there was an image of Josh driving off in a sports car, leaving Horse behind.”

  “Horse saw Josh drive away?” I asked, grabbing onto the armrest when Dominic made a sharp turn down a country road lined with vineyards. “Did he see Arturo?”

  “All I picked up was a quick flash of a young guy with a blond ponytail.”

  “But Arturo is bald. So if he didn’t go with Arturo, who did he go with? What else did Horse tell you?”

  “He didn’t like the blond guy’s smell.”

  “Bad body odor? Aftershave?”

  “Not that kind of smell.” Dominic shook his head. “Compare it to how you see colored auras of a person’s emotions. Horse smelled evil.”

  I bit my lip, remembering the evil aura of a haunted witch ball I’d possessed (to be exact, the witch ball had possessed me.) I’d had rare brushes with people, too, with auras so dark that their souls sucked you in like a black hole. And then a memory clicked—of a tall, skeleton-like young man with a freakish white ponytail fleeing the scene of a crime.

  “That’s it!” I snapped my fingers.

  “What?” Dominic tilted toward me curiously.

  “I know who Josh left with!”

  “Who?”

  “Grey, his new magician pal. They were always going off for secret magician meetings that Josh wouldn’t tell me about.”

  Frowning, I remembered my first encounter with Grey, the vandal who’d smashed up Trick or Treats with a baseball bat. Trick or Treats was a wonderful little candy shop owned by my grandmother’s friend Velvet, and I’d heard the awful smashes from the back room where we were gathered for a séance. I dashed outside and chased the vandal, but he drove away. I didn’t realize the vandal and Grey were the same person until the day Josh and I broke up. I’d warned Josh that Grey was dangerous, but he refused to believe me.

  And now Josh was missing.

  Dominic didn’t say anything for a few miles and I wondered if it had been a bad idea to talk about Josh. Discussing your ex is probably #1 on the What Not to Say to Your New Boyfriend list. I didn’t want Dominic to think I still had feelings for Josh, because I so did not. But I liked him as a friend and it was natural to worry about a missing friend. Then, as I was thinking of some way to reassure Dominic that he was the only one for me, he suddenly glanced over and said the last thing in the universe I expected to hear from him.

  “Sabine, I’m going to search for Josh.”

  Good thing I wasn’t driving or we would have run off the road and smashed through a fence. “You want to find my ex-boyfriend?”

  “Someone has to,” Dominic said in a matter-of-fact way. “It sounds like Josh has got himself into a bad situation. If he doesn’t return, Horse will starve himself to death.”

  “Finding Josh won’t be easy.” I twisted a loose strand of my hair around my finger. “He doesn’t want to be found. He’s far away with cloaked strangers.”

  Dominic gave me a sharp, sideways look. “You had a vision?”

  He knew me so well. So I told him about the cloaked figures and the knife.

  “So Jo
sh may be dead?” Dominic asked when I finished.

  “No! He’s okay … he has to be,” I said, trying to convince myself. “Still, something bad could happen, so I asked his mother if I could look around his room.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Oh, I found out something all right. But not inside Josh’s bedroom.” I tightened the hair strand around my finger so tight it snapped. “And not about Josh.”

  Dominic raised his brows in a question. I so didn’t want to talk about the ugly scene with Jade and Evan. But this was Dominic and I could trust him, so I told him everything … well almost. I left out Evan’s threat.

  “Sabine, don’t let your sister get to you. Sharing DNA doesn’t mean you have to like each other.”

  “No chance of that now. I don’t need her anyway. I already have two wonderful little sisters.”

  “Amy and Ashley are cool.”

  Mental note to self: call Amy and Ashley later and tell them just how much I appreciate them. Then I told Dominic about searching Josh’s room.

  “I touched some of his things, but couldn’t sense where he was,” I added.

  “Finding is Thorn’s talent, not yours,” Dominic said matter-of-factly, referring to our Goth friend who had helped solve a few problems with her uncanny psychometry ability. All she had to do was touch an object for its energy to send off information like an automated GPS.

  “Still, I should have picked up something,” I complained. “All I got was Opal telling me to look through a curtain to find answers. Then I saw Jade … well you know how badly that turned out.”

  “Your spirit guide may have been hinting that Jade knows something about Josh’s disappearance.”

  “Jade only knows how to lie,” I said bitterly.

  “What about Evan? As Josh’s best friend he may know where Josh went.”

  “I thought so at first, but not so much now.”

  Dominic drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “We should ask Thorn to do her Finder thing in Josh’s room.”

  I shook my head. “She won’t do it. You know how weird Thorn gets about being psychic. She hates anyone making a big deal about it.”

  “She’d do it for you.”

  “You think?” I was never sure if Thorn really liked me. We didn’t hang out at school or talk much. Still, we’d gone through some drama together and seemed to have some kind of bond.