Tragic Magic: Wards and Wands #3

by Royce, Rebecca

  “What would make a person decide to tie themselves to Peter Evans? To share a soul with a man who had multiple divorces in a world where we so rarely do that. We have a ceremony, a spell binding of our souls. I’ll probably never know what that’s like, but it does something to people. I’ve seen it. They are changed afterward, better—if you can believe it. What does it mean that he keeps undoing it and why would he?”

  Elliot chewed on his bottom lip. “I’ve met him a few times. Benefits for libraries. Musicals. He’s an asshole. A rich douche bag. Why anyone would want to soul bind with him even if it was real, I don’t know.” He rubbed his face. “That’s not a good answer. I don’t know. I’m sorry, Melanie. Like you I’ve only ever seen it from a distance. I don’t know what happens with the soul sharing, and I don’t know how not being in love affects that.”

  “I’m going to get answers. I have to. It’ll eat me alive otherwise.”

  He kissed her palm. “I don’t blame you. Hey, you never did tell me what you thought of the Bomber play?”

  Oh, yes she’d been a little distracted. “I got a little busy.”

  “True, and I wasn’t thinking about it either, but now I am. What did you think?”

  His heart beat strong beneath her ear. “I loved it. Very moving. If you want to go, we should arrange that when it’s not dangerous for me. Or you don’t have to babysit me. Or, you know, before it closes. You can go.”

  “No need for that. Which part made you cry?”

  Her something-was-off radar turned on. “If you haven’t seen it how will you know which part I’m talking about?”

  He scrunched up his nose. “Let’s say I’m familiar with the show.”

  “How can that be?” She drummed her fingers on his chest.

  “Maybe I’m not the lazy playboy everyone thinks I am. Maybe I had a career that no one knew about and will never know about until after I’m dead.”

  Realization hit her hard. “You’re Bomber.”

  He nodded. “Guilty.”

  She sat up fast, and he groaned as she put weight on his legs for a second before she scooted off. “You are the hidden author of the plays and musicals that are considered the greatest work of the witching world in this generation.”

  His grin was huge. “Oh I like that one. Who said that about me?”

  “Elliot, for goodness sake. People should know this about you.”

  He shook his head fast. “Not till I’m dead, Mel. Otherwise it’s just the Cursed Family they talk about. My family. What happens to us? Not the work itself. Don’t tell anyone. I’m trusting you.”

  She sighed. “Of course I won’t tell anyone. You’re my friend.”

  “That means a lot to me.” He sat up next to her and kissed her shoulder. “I realized when this happened that I don’t have a lot of friends. Lots of people around wanting things. They like the rich, they like the money. They liked the trips and going places. The wine. I don’t know. I’m not sure I took the time to really develop lasting friendships. I knew I’d likely check out early. Your family was my family. That’s why I called them and that’s why when they told me what you were up to I called you. I’m really glad I did.”

  He was Bomber. “You write beautiful words. I’m not surprised now that I know. You do have a tendency to say very profound things.”

  “Aw, you are so good for my ego. I can hardly stand it.” He winked at her. “Thank you for that. Seriously. I made the choice to not have a family. Not that any woman I met ever inspired me to want to. I know that sounds awful. I think I might be a little… selfish and self-centered. I didn’t feel whatever it is that you’re supposed to feel. I digress. The point is I’m glad I’m leaving something behind that was meaningful to people.”

  She didn’t know what to say to most of that and so teasing him seemed the only choice. “Not one of those blondes I’ve seen you on the news with inspired you to walk down the aisle?”

  “Oh, you’ve seen me on the gossip shows?” He kissed her hand. “And what’s with the problem with the blondes? I like brunettes, too, Mel. As you know.”

  He didn’t really know if he’d have found her attractive or not. That really was neither here nor there. “I’m getting dressed and composing a message to my parents. I might find some food, too. Edward should be gone now, right?”

  “Long gone. I’m sorry I used him as an excuse this morning to delay this.”

  His words startled her. “Did you do that because you didn’t want to do this?”

  Elliot rose, spelling his clothes back on. She dressed herself as well and waited for him to talk. “I meant what I said when I said I wanted to wine and dine you. I felt like… like I wasn’t really within my rights to do this. I decided to believe you when you said you wanted this, too. You are okay with everything, right?”

  She forced herself to smile because it would help her to sell it. “I’m a grown woman. I’m good at doing casual sex without expectations of walking down the aisle and soul binding. You’re my friend. I never expected to have you in my life at all. I’ll take this. Okay?”

  He took her hand in his. “Okay, Mel.”

  She really hoped he believed her. Besides, he’d told her the truth. There had never been a woman who had inspired him to want forever. She wouldn’t have been different even if every bit of circumstances were changed. The girls who thought they could change a forever bachelor drove her crazy. Mostly, if you listened closely, people did a pretty good job of telling you who they were. Elliot had never hidden himself. For all his gentle understanding, he didn’t want forever for very good reasons. And if he’d never been cursed, they’d never have been here together anyway. There were no scenarios when he returned her infatuation.

  They walked together to the dining room where she intended to send her parents a recorded message they could watch, showing them she was okay. A loud noise above their head that wasn’t the storm caught her attention. It sounded like a bang. She stopped moving to stare upward.

  “Oh, that’s the faceless ghost.”

  She blinked. “The what?”

  “That’s what my mother called him. We have a ghost in the attic. He’s never seen, but it has to be him. Or her, I guess. Just one of the spirits in the house.”

  She shivered. “I have to tell you I am so glad I never saw or heard one the whole time I was a child here.”

  “That is weird that you didn’t.” He shrugged. “They’re just anomalies in the house that shields the Cursed Family from the world.”

  No, that didn’t make any sense. She’d gone her whole life and never heard another witch tell one word about a ghost. Settling herself down in the living room, she sent Mitchell a note asking him if he knew anything about ghosts.

  She turned her attention to her parents. With a swish of her hand, she started to record herself. The magic would place her image and what she said onto the paper they’d receive. Just as she started speaking the attic banged again.

  Melanie gritted her teeth. “Hi Mom and Dad, sorry if I sound funny. I’m fine. Doing really well here. I am encountering ghosts and hearing things. Elliot says you are fully aware of them, but somehow I don’t remember seeing them when I was little. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I am well and will be until the Enforcers catch Peter Evans. You be safe. I love you.”

  Elliot came out from the kitchen and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “Hi, Judy and Max. I’m taking good care of your daughter and somehow we are managing to not burn the place down. Try not to worry too much. Let’s ask Lawson if you can come visit.”

  The easy way he touched her in a video being sent to her parents should have concerned her. But if he wasn’t bothered, she wasn’t going to be.

  As she sent off the message to Lawson’s safe address, Elliot came back in, holding two plates filled with pasta. “I can make this without having to be able to see it.”

  “It smells great.”

  The banging noise sounded again. Ghosts scared her. That much was
true, but like storms, she couldn’t avoid this. “After dinner I’m going up there. I want to make sure your faceless ghost isn’t actually a large squirrel banging around in your attic.”

  Elliot laughed. “Have at it. I looked a lot when I was a kid. Nothing. And always the same noise.”

  “Well, I am going to give it my best try. I’m good at riddling out puzzles, and you are one. So is this house.” She hadn’t noticed it when she was a child, being too preoccupied with Elliot himself. And then when he was out of the house and his father’s health declined, she’d spent a lot of time trying not to notice what was happening. By then she’d been pretty inwardly focused, too. The situation of being not super-rich in a school where most people were had been enough to keep her attention.

  Still, shouldn’t she have noticed ghosts? Plural. More than one.

  Elliot sat back in his chair. “Have at it, Mel. Maybe you’ll solve it. You’re certainly smart enough to do so.”

  She hadn’t felt that way lately. “People smarter than me have tried to fix this. But maybe I can at least figure out who your ghost is up there.”

  There were too many mysteries in her life right now. Something had to start to make sense. She was going to get to the bottom of that noise. And so help her, if it was generations of rats, she was going to manage not to run screaming from the attic. Somehow. Thunder boomed, and the rain poured down. Melanie was sick of being scared. She couldn’t control assassins but this she could get a grasp on.

  Chapter 8

  Melanie floated up to the attic. For years, Ava had seemed powerless, and it had really given Melanie an idea of how difficult things were for humans. They’d have needed a ladder to get up there. Of course, power was relative. The Enforcers could have just popped on up.

  The attic was loaded with dust, and it took an illumination spell to light the place up. Her mother must never have come up here because it looked like it had been generations since anyone had cleaned the place. In fact, no one had come to clean the house since she’d been here. Edward ran things, but where was the staff? It used to take half a dozen people to run the Boothe estate.

  She was going to have to ask Elliot.

  In the meantime, she wandered through the attic, ducking to avoid hitting her head on some beams that were low, but otherwise seeing nothing but boxes that needed to be gone through. She sighed. There was lot more work left to do than she’d thought. With a flick of her wrist she sent them downstairs to the study. Elliot might not even know these were up here needing to be sorted.

  Goosebumps broke out on her arms, and she rubbed them. Melanie swallowed before she turned around, slowly, to see what had made her heebie-jeebies stand on alert. Nothing was there. She sighed. There hadn’t been anything to see the whole time she was up here.

  “Find anything?” She jumped before shrieking. It took her half a second to realize it was Elliot. He shook his head at her. “Sorry, didn’t mean to terrify you.”

  “Yes you did or you would have made some noise.” She laughed. The high after being scared of something and then finding out it was nothing was like riding a human roller coaster. Up and down. Up and down. She’d only done it once, but it was the closest feeling she could relate this to.

  He held up his hands. “Seriously, find anything?”

  “No.” She stormed over to him. “I guess you’re right. There’s nothing up here I can see, Bomber.”

  He groaned. “Are you going to call me that now?”

  “Maybe. When I feel like it. Come on. I just transported a ton of boxes to the study. We have a lot more work to do.”

  He ran a hand up her arm. “Or we could keep ourselves occupied in other, more enjoyable ways.”

  The smile that crossed her face came with a surge of warmth from his words. “I love that idea. But those boxes aren’t going to sort themselves. Give me two hours of organizing and I’ll race you to the bedroom to spend the night in more… productive ways.”

  He flared his nostrils. “I take it you’re never going to be able to relax if you don’t get to accomplish something productive?”

  “Correct.” She shrugged. “What do the humans call it? I’m a type-A personality.”

  He took her arm. “I’ve spent almost no time with humans. But they seem to like the Bomber shows. Two of them did okay on Broadway. You still haven’t told me which scene made you cry.”

  She wrapped her arms around him. “I’m not going to. You’ll just have to suffer wondering.”

  Two could play the teasing game.

  * * *

  Melanie had made it through the second box when Elliot started to write. It was an interesting thing to watch. He couldn’t see, so he spelled a pen in the air, and it must have been taking the words directly from his head onto the paper. He leaned back on the couch, and she wondered if he was even aware that he was composing at all.

  It was actually sort of beautiful. She almost asked him where his ideas came from but stopped. Was that something she really wanted to know? His ideas came alive on stage, people speaking his words. If it was a conversation he overheard at the clothes store, wouldn’t that somehow cheapen the experience for her? Better to see the magic of the finished work. And if he couldn’t explain it, then that had to be a bit of a frustrating conversation for him to have.

  She grabbed a journal. There had been several in the box and none of them interesting. The price of groceries, what his great-great-great—she couldn’t keep track of how many greats—grandfather had paid the staff. But this was different. She flipped through the pages and couldn’t read any of the words. What language was that?

  Melanie sat down in the chair and tried to make sense of it. Some of the letters weren’t even ones she recognized.

  “Elliot, sorry to interrupt, but I have a question.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Not to worry.” The pen in the air didn’t even stop moving. “I actually multitask when I write really well. I tend to do other things. This is just how it is now because I can’t see. Sorry, off track. What’s going on?”

  “I found a journal. The writing isn’t a language I know. Did your ancestor who built this house—because that is when this box seems to have originated from—speak a different language? Everything else has been in English.”

  He shook his head. “Not that I know of. We founded the area. I think we spoke the common tongue. Weird. Obviously, I can’t see it to make sense of it for you.”

  She nodded to herself. “Yep. Got it. Would it be okay if I sent it to my friend Mitchell? He’s good at this sort of thing. Ancient writings are one of his fortes.”

  “Sure. If you think it could help know what to do with it.”

  Maybe it would. At the very least, if it was gibberish drawings or something, he’d know that, too. She sent it to Mitchell.

  “So it’s funny going through this box. Everything is well ordered. But you guys weren’t always rich. It seems like he struggled for a while. I wouldn’t have thought that considering this house.”

  Elliot got to his feet. “We owned the land but not this house. And not all of the land, if the stories are to be true. He struck it big although the details are scarce. Any info on that yet that you’ve found? This is just what I was hoping to uncover for posterity. I figured someone might like to know that. His son was the first one cursed so it was always the irony. We were rich, everything we invested doubling and tripling, like we couldn’t fail. Well, everyone but me. I never touched the money. Left it doing whatever it did in the accounts my father created for it. It’s still earning now but not thanks to me.”

  “Nothing yet, but I’ll keep looking. Guess it was good luck I went to the attic.” She bit down on her lip. “I was always in awe of all of this, your house, the way your parents got to live. I swore someday I’d have my own fortune. And I did before I got stupid and blew it all.”

  Elliot walked over to her, the paper and pen floating down to the desk. “What do you mean?”

  “I was earning han
d over fist. Your father taught me some of his investment strategies. I worked for a law firm that specialized in making the rich richer. I was going to show all those people who treated me like less than in school that I wasn’t to be discounted. But then one day it wasn’t enough… I had to suddenly go out on my own. No one does that anymore. Once again I was going to show everyone. I’ve blown through my savings. I am going to have to ask my old boss for my job back.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’m exhausted even thinking about it.”

  He wrapped her into his arms. “You tried. There’s no failure in that. The failure would have been in not trying. My first three shows didn’t get picked up anywhere. They were awful. I get how it feels to not… make it. But you will. I believe in you. There’s something so strong and steady about your energy, Melanie. I can’t see you, but even I can tell you’re brilliant. Your mind works fast, it snaps to decisions. And who tormented you in school?”

  If her mind worked fast, his was supersonic speed. “Everyone who wasn’t Ava and Mitchell. Even Lawson and I used to fight. He was in the same boat as me. You’d have thought we could have been friends, but it was more like we were competitors. Stefan, too. We hardly ever spoke, but it wasn’t great.”

  “Why were they after you for being poor? And you weren’t poor. Not really. Your parents made pretty good money and you lived here.”

  Did he really not get it? “Elliot, my parents worked for your family. That school was filled with people who didn’t hold their own staff in high regard. No, I wasn’t really poor. There are folks out there in much worse circumstances. I had everything I needed and then some. But I was the staff’s child, viewed to be there as a favor to your father. I had to work three times as hard to prove my worth and even then most of them wouldn’t be my friend. It’s okay. I took the opportunities having that degree gave me and I ran with it. I did make two very good friends. And these days I have plenty of good people in my life. Was it so different when you went through?”