Right Hand Magic

by Nancy A. Collins

  “Your mom’s right,” I said as Hexe and I slipped our arms around each other’s waists. It felt so incredibly natural, as if we had been holding each other for years.

  “She usually is.” He smiled. “You’ll find that out soon enough.”

  “C’mon, you two!” Lyta said, motioning for us to hurry up. “We’ll give you a ride home.”

  I looked around, suddenly realizing we were missing a member of our group. “Where’s Lukas?”

  “Don’t worry about him.” Hexe smiled. “You know how cats are. He’ll show up at the house when he’s hungry. Besides, he has no reason to hide anymore.”

  I took Hexe’s six-fingered hands in my five-fingered ones and kissed them. “Before we go riding off into the night with a bunch of lesbian road warriors, there’s just one thing I wanted to tell you. ...”

  “Yes, Tate? What is it?”

  “Don’t you ever nearly get yourself killed trying to save my life ever again! Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, mind you. . . .”

  He grinned and leaned in for another kiss. “You know what they say—‘No pain, no gain.’ ”

  I rolled my eyes at that last part, but I kissed him anyway.

  Chapter 23

  After a week spent recuperating from his near miss in the fighting pit, Hexe was finally taking me on our first real date. And, as promised, he wasn’t taking me to the Calf.

  Lukas was standing in the door of the kitchen as I came down the stairs in a strapless black sequined lace cocktail dress and a pair of Jimmy Choo open-toe sling-back pumps. Now that he was no longer a fugitive from the Malandanti, the teenaged were-cat had transitioned from refugee houseguest to paying boarder, thanks to his new job delivering prescriptions and medicinal meals via bicycle for Dr. Mao.

  “What are you all dressed up for?” he asked.

  “Hexe has reserved a table for us at the Golden Bowery,” I explained as I finished swapping out my stainless steel hoops for sparkling pear-shaped diamond drop earrings.

  “You two are going out?” he groaned. “Why didn’t anyone tell me before I went out and bought a large pizza to celebrate my first paycheck?” He pointed to the pizza box sitting on the kitchen table, the top of which was emblazoned with the Strega Nona logo—a witch riding sidesaddle on a pizza peel.

  “Why don’t you invite Meikei over?” I suggested. “After all the times she’s brought you food, it’s about time you returned the favor.”

  Lukas’s eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea!”

  “You’re welcome, kiddo.”

  “I just got a call from Kidron,” Hexe announced as he leaned over the second-floor balustrade, still fussing with his tie. “He’s waiting for us at the curb.” His golden eyes widened upon seeing me. “Wow! You look amazing.”

  “And you look like you’re not ready yet,” I chided.

  “ ’Tis merely an illusion, I assure you.” He snapped the fingers of his right hand, and the tie about his neck looped itself into the perfect Windsor knot. He trotted down the stairs to join me, adjusting the cuffs of his Ralph Lauren suit along the way. “What do you think? Am I presentable?”

  “You clean up pretty good.” I smiled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a male model. Although I’ll admit I never would have guessed you owned a suit like that when I first met you.”

  “I didn’t!” he laughed. “My mom bought it for me when I told her where I was taking you for dinner. I think she was afraid I’d show up in front of the mâitre’d in a sports coat and a Panic! At the Disco T-shirt.”

  “Something tells me she didn’t need a crystal ball to see that in your future,” Scratch sniffed from his perch on the ground-floor newel post. His hairless body still bore the fading scratches and bite marks from his brawl with Bonzo.

  “So, if you two are going out on the town, who’s gonna feed me?”

  “Lukas will take care of that, won’t you, kid?” I replied, catching the were-cat’s eye.

  “No problem,” Lukas answered.

  “And you’ll make sure our young friend here stays out of the liquor cabinet while we’re gone, right Scratch?” Hexe said pointedly.

  “Awww, c’mon Hexe ... ” Lukas groaned.

  “Emancipated minor or not, you’re still just sixteen,” Hexe reminded him. “And while you’re living under my roof, you abide by the rules. And the rule is ‘no drunk underage were-cats.’ I have enough headaches as it is without adding that to the list.”

  Hexe wasn’t kidding. Thanks to Roger’s big mouth, once he had unfrozen, everyone now knew I was the heiress to the Eresby fortune. So now Derrick Templeton, Roger, and the taxi driver who plowed through the plate glass window when the Cyber-Panther ran out in front of his cab had all filed civil suits against Hexe and me for everything from breach of contract to pain and suffering to supernatural assault. It looked as though for the foreseeable future most of my trust fund payments would be going to pay my lawyers.

  Luckily, though, Lady Syra’s connections had kept us from getting into real hot water with the authorities. Once the PTU realized the extent of the Malandanti’s pit-fighting operation, they could have cared less about finding out who put Boss Marz in the hospital with a broken sternum, or how Nach ended up with both arms ripped off.

  Marz could have dropped the dime on us himself, of course, once he regained consciousness, but all that would’ve netted him were a couple charges of kidnapping and attempted murder on top of the RICO charges he was already looking at.

  “Don’t worry, boss,” Scratch assured his master. “I’ll keep an eye on things while you’re away.”

  Having bid our housemates good night, Hexe and I gathered up our belongings and headed for the door.

  “Here, allow me,” Hexe said, helping me into my coat.

  “How Continental of you!” I teased.

  “Yes, but in my case the continent is at the bottom of the sea.” He opened the front door with a grand flourish, motioning for me to exit ahead of him. “Milady, your chariot awaits.”

  As I stepped out onto the front stoop, I gasped in surprise at what stood waiting at the curb. Instead of the usual hansom cab he piloted, Kidron was harnessed to a Victorian carriage, like the ones in Central Park. The trim of the carriage was decorated with a garland of interwoven red roses, and there were flowers woven into the centaur’s mane and tail.

  “Do you like it?” he asked hopefully.

  “It’s beautiful,” I replied.

  “You deserve to be surrounded by beauty,” he said as he helped me into the carriage. “If it were in my power, I would make every day from here on in perfect, so you would never be unhappy again.”

  I leaned back and rested my head on his shoulder, staring up at the few brave stars strong enough to pierce the night sky over Manhattan. The sound of Kidron’s hooves clip-clopping against the pavement was almost hypnotic. Hexe slipped his arm about my waist, pulling me even closer.

  “As long as you’re with me, I don’t think I can be unhappy,” I whispered.

  “Me, too,” he replied.

  The Golden Bowery was located on Green Man Lane, a relatively short dogleg street that connected Maiden Lane with Liberty Street. I don’t know if it would be fair to call it a “throwback” to the halcyon days of the Stork Club and the Copacabana, because it predated them. Since the Roaring Twenties, the Golden Bowery had mixed the sophistication of the “smart set” with the allure of the exotic into a potent cocktail of power, money, and glamour, in every sense of the word.

  Although its exterior was relatively nondescript, it boasted a pair of huge doors cast from bronze and gilded in fourteen karat gold. On either side of the entrance were huge African lions carved from marble. The twin statues were said to be enchanted and would come to life should anyone be foolish enough to try and steal the establishment’s trademark portals.

  After dropping off our coats with the hatcheck station, which was run by a young woman with four arms, we went to see about our reser
vation.

  “Name, please?” the headwaiter asked without looking up from his seating chart.

  “Hexe. Party of two.”

  The maître d’, an older Kymeran with a scrying-glass monocle screwed into his right eye, snapped to attention as if he’d been goosed with a cattle prod. “Of course, sir!” He picked up a couple of heavy leather-bound menus and motioned for us to follow him. “Your table is right this way, Serenity.”

  The Golden Bowery’s main room was supported by Grecian pillars and hung with velvet drapes the color of good wine. Vines wrapped themselves around the pillars, creating a living canopy through which strands of colored lights were cunningly woven. On the ceiling overhead painted nymphs frolicked with fauns bearing clusters of ripe grapes. In the middle of the room was a large parquet dance floor. The chandelier hanging overhead from the ceiling was made of stained glass, which cast a rainbow of light onto the crisp white tablecloths below.

  At least half of the clientele was human, and I recognized several famous actors, influential politicians, and wealthy socialites. The other half was a mixture of Kymerans, leprechauns, huldrefolk, and various shape-shifter species—all as elegantly dressed and carefully groomed as their human counterparts. These were the Beautiful People of Golgotham, not unlike those I had been raised among on the Upper East Side.

  Our maître d’ led us to a raised section overlooking the dance floor, opposite the swing era-style band box. As we wound our way through the other diners, the Golden Bowery’s Kymeran patrons fell silent to watch us, only to start talking again, in hushed voices, once we had passed.

  A bottle of champagne was already awaiting us at our table, nestled inside a silver bucket full of ice. Hexe held out my chair for me as the maître d’ set about uncorking our wine, which he then poured into delicate crystal flutes, the rims of which were chased in twenty-four karat gold.

  “Everybody’s staring at us,” I whispered.

  “Let them go ahead and stare,” he replied. “It’s time certain things changed in Golgotham. Here’s to our first night out as a couple.” He touched his glass to mine. “And many more ahead.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” I smiled. “Here’s to the right kind of change—for both of us.”

  “You know my people can read auras, right? That means we can see the energy those around us give off, both positive and negative. Do you know what I saw the first time I met you?”

  “A nump?”

  “You have never been a nump in my eyes—and you never will be,” he said emphatically. “No, what I saw was a beautiful halo about your head. It looked like a hybrid of a sunflower, a stained glass window, and a mandala, and it spun and pulsed like a kaleidoscope. I’ve never seen anything like it before. That’s why I automatically assumed you were a psychic or a medium. When you said you weren’t, something inside me said, This woman is worth knowing. I knew right then and there, no matter what, you and I were destined to be together.”

  “That is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. Most guys would just say, ‘I thought you were really hot.’ ”

  “Well, that, too,” he said, winking at me over the rim of his champagne glass.

  The bandleader—a dapper-looking huldu with a gray goatee—gave a short downstroke, directing his ensemble with the cow’s tail hanging from the special vent in the back of his dress pants. The band promptly launched into an up-tempo Glenn Miller cover orchestrated for panpipes, lyre, aulos, bodhran drum, and didgeridoo. It should have been an unholy cacophony, but somehow it worked. Several couples got up from their seats and headed for the dance floor.

  “Would you care to dance?” he asked.

  “I’d love to,” I replied, offering him my hand.

  He gallantly wrapped my arm about his and escorted me to the open dance floor. He watched the dancing couples as they twirled past, waiting for an opening, then quickly stepped in to join the crowd, drawing me in after him. He pulled me close against him, resting his hand against my hip as we circled the floor, the other dancers pressing in against us. I could feel him burning against my thigh like a banked coal, so I moved so that my own heat pressed against him. It was as if we were locked together below the waist, joined at heart, hand, and loin.

  No wonder I’d had such lousy luck in the romance department in the past—all my previous lovers had been human. And not one of them would have been willing to die to save my life; of that I’m certain. Hell, most of them couldn’t be bothered to put the toilet seat down. Although, to be fair, I probably wouldn’t have jeopardized my life for any of them, either. But as I looked up into his golden eyes, shimmering like twin suns, I knew there was nothing I would not dare for my warlock prince.

  We began undressing each other the moment we entered the door. I hungrily kissed his face and neck as I loosened his tie, while he reached behind me and fumbled with my zipper.

  “It’s about time you two got back,” Scratch commented acidly from his guard post atop the liquor cabinet. “Lukas took Hello Kitty out to the movies.”

  “Beat it, Scratch!” Hexe said, flapping his tie at the familiar. “Scat!”

  “I beg your pardon?” the familiar sniffed.

  “You heard me! Go sleep in Lukas’s room tonight.”

  “Oh, you’re doing that again, huh?” Scratch said, rolling his eyes in disgust. “You mortals and your revolting mating habits!” With that, the familiar snapped open his batlike wings and flapped out of the room.

  “Your place or mine?” I winked, kicking off my Choos.

  “Mine.” He grinned. “I have my own bathroom.”

  “I knew there were perks to fooling around with the landlord!”

  Before I was halfway to the stairs, Hexe scooped me up in his arms, taking the risers two at a time, both of us whooping and laughing the whole way. I was impressed by his strength and how effortlessly he carried me, as if I were a doll.

  Hexe’s bedroom was at the very end of the second-floor hallway, overlooking the garden. He gave the door a kick with his foot, and it swung open to reveal a room twice the size of mine. In the center of the room was a king-sized four-poster, with bedknobs shaped like owls.

  As he set my bare feet back onto the floor, I gave him a deep, wet kiss, lolling my tongue around in his mouth. We stumbled toward the bed, our clothes falling along the way, and we tumbled onto the sheets, giggling like children at play.

  He raised himself on one elbow and looked down at me, smoothing my hair out of my face with his wizard’s hand. I, in turn, ran my fingers over his shoulders, his neck, and across his hairless chest, exploring his physique with my sculptor’s touch.

  Where my mother would look at Hexe and view him as “inhuman” or “deformed” because of his cat-slit pupils, extra fingers, and strangely colored hair, I exulted in his otherness. I didn’t set out to fall in love with Hexe; yet here I was, trembling in his arms as if I had never been with a man before in my life. I wrapped my five fingers about his six.

  He seemed to know exactly how far I needed to go, and he steered me there as slowly as he could, making my desire double up against itself, until I was writhing beneath him, hanging suspended from a precipice. I gave voice to something between a laugh and a moan as I dissolved into ecstatic relief, wrapping my legs about him while he buried his face in my hair.

  When it was over, he rolled onto his back and pulled me to him, so that my head rested on his bare chest. He gestured with his right hand, and flowers leaped from his fingertips. Slowly they drifted through the air, filling the room with their delicate perfume. I watched in quiet amazement as the blossoms slowly dissolved, their beautiful colors fading like a rainbow in the sun, until they became lacy whiffs of pale gray smoke. We lay like that, our limbs loosely wrapped about each other, for the rest of the night, exchanging whispers and kisses, until the morning star was lost in the lightening sky.

  I awoke the next day to find myself staring up at a painting on the ceiling depicting a group of beautiful young Kymeran women draped
in diaphanous veils, dancing among rose tendrils. Comets shot across the blue sky above the carefree dancers, while at the very epicenter was a dragon, rising from a pillar of flame.

  Hexe lay curled beside me, his naked body as pale and pure as marble in the early-morning light. I sat there for a long moment and watched him sleep, drinking in the sight of him. Now that I was able to view his naked body in full daylight, I was pleased to see that all his hair was the same shade of purple as that on his head. His splendid physique would make a wonderful subject for a statue. . . . With a start, I realized that Hexe’s body was an exact flesh-and-blood double for that of the original Dying Gaul.

  How strange I should find myself in bed with a man who bore such a strong resemblance to the statue that first sparked my imagination and curiosity, all those years ago, and inspired me to become the artist I had now become. Then again, Golgotham was the place for strange things. And there was nothing stranger than love. Although we were born of wildly different cultures, there was something in our hearts and brains that drew us together and kept us there. I could no more cease to love him than I could cease to breathe.

  Since it was still relatively early, I thought I would surprise Hexe by making breakfast. I remembered the Mexican clay-pot coffee he’d made for me, and I decided to return the favor. I went back to my own room and slipped into a T-shirt and jeans, then headed downstairs.

  A quick inventory of the kitchen pantry informed me we were out of coffee and milk. The nearest corner market was Dumo’s, two blocks away on the corner of Horsecart Street and Beekman. I could get there and back in plenty of time before Hexe woke up. I grabbed my coat—still crumpled on the floor from the night before—and headed out on my grocery run.

  It was a beautiful fall day in the city. It wouldn’t be long before winter would arrive, muffling the streets under blankets of slush and snow. But until then, the sky was blue and clear, the air crisp and refreshing. I tilted my head back, luxuriating in the simple pleasure of sunshine on my face. It was funny how being in love made everything seem just a little bit special, as if the world had been washed clean for my benefit, and presented to me sparkling new.