Under other circumstances, I’d have been the first to admit that Mom could be a bit on the crazy side, but that was just her personality. Now I knew for a fact that Mom was most definitely not crazy, that everything she’d seen had been real. Unfortunately, it was impossible for me to explain that Mom wasn’t crazy without sounding even crazier than she did. It’s one thing to announce that you’ve seen something odd. It’s another entirely to say that you know exactly what the odd thing was and that it really was magic.
“We’re not talking about shipping her off to the state hospital tomorrow,” Dad said. “We just want to keep an eye on her for the next few weeks and make sure she’s okay.”
“She’s probably a little overtired and stressed-out,” Beth said reassuringly, giving my hands a squeeze. “A week or so of rest, and she’ll be right back to normal.”
She most definitely would be, if I could do anything about it. “Okay,” I agreed. “Two weeks, and then we’ll discuss this again. And now, I probably ought to catch up on some work while Sherri’s watching Mom.” The circle split up as everyone headed off to their respective jobs to close the store down for the night. Fortunately, no one followed me to the office. I didn’t need an audience for what I was about to do.
There was only one way I could ensure that Mom stopped seeing things that would make her sound crazy, and that was to deal with the magic. Magic wasn’t normal around here, and I was pretty sure my former boss would want to hear about the situation. Making life easier for Mom would be a bonus.
With one last look over my shoulder, I picked up the phone and dialed my old office. It was after business hours in New York, but my boss had a way of knowing when something was going on, and since he lived in the office building, there was a chance he’d still be around.
Sure enough, a deep voice answered the phone after one ring. “Hello, Katie. It’s good to hear from you.” When I’d first met Merlin, he’d had an indecipherable accent, but at the time he’d only recently been awakened from a long magical hibernation and had just learned modern English. Yes, I mean that Merlin, the one from Camelot. He’s my boss—well, former boss. His accent had faded considerably in the time I’d been gone. He barely sounded foreign anymore. “Now, what seems to be the trouble?”
I checked over my shoulder one more time before launching into the whole story about the wizard on the courthouse square. “And now the family thinks Mom is crazy. I can’t let her be medicated or locked away when I know that what she’s seeing is real. Are there even supposed to be wizards in this area?”
“There are none I’ve heard of. I shall have to check with the regulatory body to see if one has registered. I do, however, find it very suspicious that one has appeared in your hometown at this time.”
“Do you think Idris and his gang figured out where I am and followed me to stir things up? That was exactly what I was trying to prevent by leaving New York, you know.”
“We don’t yet have enough information to know, but we should at least investigate. Given our ongoing problems with rogue magic, I would prefer to be safe rather than sorry.”
“Thank you. I had a feeling this was something you’d want to hear about. So far, this guy doesn’t seem to be doing anything all that dangerous other than stirring up Mom and maybe bilking the courthouse workers out of a dollar or two. I guess I’m mostly worried because his spells look awfully familiar, like the type of spells Idris has been trying to sell. At the very least, it might tell us if he’s going after a national market.”
Idris had once worked for MSI but was fired for spending too much time developing ethically questionable spells. He’d then gone into business for himself marketing those same spells out of back-alley shops, and we’d managed to put a stop to that by making sure he couldn’t sell anything he’d developed as an MSI employee. He’d made a comeback with some serious financial backing, this time selling a wider variety of spells, but still focusing on the kind of magic MSI avoided, like using magic to influence others for personal gain.
“I will send someone to investigate as soon as possible,” Merlin said.
“Great!” And then because I couldn’t resist, I added, “And how are things going otherwise? Any new developments?”
“Mr. Idris is being his usual elusive self. We have had no new encounters since you left, which has made it difficult to make much headway.”
“Maybe all I need to do is stay out of town and you won’t have any trouble at all,” I grumbled.
“I hardly think that is the case. He and the people he apparently answers to have likely been working on something new that will surprise and confound us, as always.”
“Oh. Well, keep up the good work.”
After I got off the phone with Merlin, I got online to check airline schedules, just out of curiosity. If whoever Merlin sent took half an hour or so to wrap things up at the office, he could be home within an hour. He might need half an hour to pack, and then it could take at least an hour to get to LaGuardia at this time of day. That is, if he used normal transportation. Magical folk had other means of travel at their disposal, things like teleporting or using flying carpets, but I decided to estimate on the safe side. I looked for flights within a couple of hours of that time and saw that there were several options throughout the evening. They arrived at the Dallas–Fort Worth airport very late at night, and then it was about a two-hour drive to get here.
I forced myself to stop creating a mental itinerary before I drove myself crazy. I had no idea how big an emergency they considered this to be. Nobody was going to rush straight to the airport and hop a plane just because I’d called with a report of odd things going on in a small, out-of-the-way town.
Besides, I doubted it would be the person I most wanted them to send. Why would they send one of their top guys to check on a little bit of amateur wizardry in a backwater like this? Owen would be in New York, heading up the overall efforts, not running off to Texas to put out minor fires. They probably had specialists for dealing with new wizards in unexpected places. And did I really want to see him, anyway?
Well, yeah, I did want to see him. I got a flutter in my chest just thinking about it. The question was, would seeing him be a good idea? I was able to feel noble and stoic for my brave decision to walk away from a man I was falling in love with in order to further the greater good. If I saw him again, it might not be so easy to be noble. There was also always the chance that he didn’t want to see me. I had no idea what he thought about what I’d done, whether he understood or was angry. So I guess that made Owen both the person I most and least wanted to see.
I held my breath all morning at the store the next day, and I nearly jumped out of my skin every time I heard the front door open. It was entirely possible that whomever Merlin had sent could be here by now. But each time, it was only a customer. I spent more time in the front of the store than I usually liked to; I was far too edgy to stay in my office.
By lunchtime, I’d come to the conclusion that a watched pot never boiled, so the surest way to make the person from MSI show up would be to take off for a while. I picked up lunch at the Dairy Queen, then went over to the motel to eat with Nita. She was sitting behind the front desk, her nose buried in a pink book with a martini glass on the cover. She jerked to attention when the bell on the front door jingled as I entered. “What brings you here?” she asked.
“I needed a break from my crazy family,” I said, in all honesty. “Sometimes I worry that I’ll get caught up in the madness and become just as bad as they are.”
She groaned. “Tell me about it. You should have seen the ceremony my mom did this morning.
Incense, chanting, all that.”
I thought the room smelled different—not the usual scent of surface cleaner and pine air freshener.
“Why? What happened?”
“My dad watched the security tapes from the other night, when the window vanished. There wasn’t anyone on there for half an hour before and after the time I’m pre
tty sure I heard something. The tape’s too grainy to tell exactly when the window went away. Of course, Mom had a big freak-out. I actually think the time on the security camera is off. It didn’t get set for Daylight Savings Time a few years ago, and it hasn’t been right since, but she’d prefer to believe there were evil spirits.”
“Your mom and my mom must be drinking the same Kool-Aid,” I said as I joined her on her side of the counter. “My mom’s become convinced that there’s something very odd going on in town.” Never mind that she was right. It was her enthusiasm for finding oddities—and the possibility that it would get her into trouble—that worried me. And now I wondered if the missing window might have something to do with our town wizard.
“It’s because this town is so incredibly dull that you have to imagine things to find any excitement at all. If my dad had to conform to every cultural stereotype and run a motel, why couldn’t it at least have been one in a real city? We could have been near Six Flags. Or maybe the Alamo.” Nita waved her book at me. “It’s no fair! Why can’t I have this kind of life—having cosmos at a bar after work with my friends and going on lots of hot dates with successful men? And to think, you were there and you left it behind!”
“It’s not quite the way it seems in books.”
“So you didn’t go out with your friends and you didn’t go on dates?”
“Well, yeah, I guess I did. But it wasn’t as fun as it sounds in books. I got set up on a lot of blind dates that never went well. Some of them were real disasters.”
“You know what they say, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet your prince.”
I shuddered. “That’s not as effective as you’d think,” I muttered under my breath.
“What’s that?”
“I mean, quantity doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll ever find quality.” Plus, men who’d been turned into frogs tended to have some lingering issues once you broke the spell and turned them back into men.
“It still sounds better to me than spending my life sitting behind this desk. Is one date too much to ask for?”
“You’ve never been on a date?”
“Oh, come on Katie, you were there in high school.”
“Yeah, but surely since then?”
“Okay, maybe one or two in college when my parents didn’t know. But nothing since then. Who would I date around here?”
“Steve Grant is apparently still single.”
She laughed out loud. “Oh, good one! He’s exactly my type!” Once she got herself under control she said, “Well, if you aren’t willing to run away to the city with me, maybe we can take a trip for a couple of days and do some girl stuff like go shopping and have drinks and flirt and all that. What do you say?”
“I say it sounds like fun. I just have a few family things I want to straighten out first.”
“I heard about your mom’s fainting spell. Is she okay?”
News really did travel fast in this town. “Yeah, the doctor said she’s probably fine. We’re keeping an eye on her for a while, just in case.”
“Okay, then I’ll start angling for a couple of days off, and then we can hit the city! What do you think, Dallas or Austin? Dallas has the shopping—not that I can afford much, but it would be fun to look—and Austin has the nightlife. I know, I’ll look it up in the tourist guides and see what looks good.”
And she was off. This was a plan she might actually carry out, I thought as I noticed the way her eyes shone. I knew how stifled I felt around here and could only imagine what life must be like for her.
“Let me know what you decide, and I’ll try to swing some time off myself.”
I heard a car drive up in front of the office and whirled to look. It was a relatively new, bland sedan that was probably a rental. My heart started racing. Maybe he’d stopped to secure accommodations and then freshen up before meeting me at the store to get the scoop, and this was the only motel in town. The only other lodgings were in a bed-and-breakfast in an old mansion near the square.
Unfortunately for both Nita and me, the man who got out of the car was neither young and Indian nor Owen. He was just another middle-aged traveling salesman type who must have pissed off someone in his company to get assigned this cruddy territory.
I shook my head at my own silliness. Why was I still getting excited to see a rental car when I was fairly certain it wasn’t going to be Owen? Deep down inside, I supposed I still hoped that he’d insist on being the one to come investigate because he wanted to see me as much as I wanted to see him.
Nita didn’t have a monopoly on romantic fantasies, it appeared.
While she checked the salesman in, I arranged our lunches on the desk behind the counter, then picked up one of the many magazines she kept in a nearby basket and flipped through it. It was one of those regional tourist magazines they put in hotel rooms, with a few articles about local attractions, a calendar of events, and a lot of ads. The articles were the same in almost every issue, so I went straight to the ads, hoping to find something interesting to do in there. What I saw was more than interesting. It was downright weird.
On the page full of ads for area private schools, there was one that said, “Can you read this?” Since I could, I kept reading.
If you’re one of the few, select people who can read this ad, you may have special abilities! With theright training to develop your natural talents, fame and fortune are practically inevitable!
It reminded me of those ads that said if you could draw a turtle cartoon, you could get training to illustrate children’s books. Except this ad didn’t ask for anything other than the ability to read it. I leaned closer to the page so my necklace practically touched it, and then I felt the faint vibration from a very weak spell. The ability they were looking for was magic, I was sure. The ad must have been veiled so that only people with magic powers—or the complete lack thereof—could read it. I had a feeling I knew where our local wizard must have come from. Someone around here was training people to use magic.
Nita sent the customer off on his way to his room, then we settled down for lunch. I left the magazine open on the desk, the ad clearly visible. “What do you think of that?” I asked, pointing in the general direction of the ad in question.
She leaned over and squinted at the page. “‘Miss Rochester’s Academy for Young Ladies,’” she read.
“‘Training girls in social deportment for a refined way of life.’ You have got to be kidding. I am so glad my mom never saw anything like this when I was in high school. If she thought she could have shipped me off to a private school to teach me to be demure, she would have.”
If Nita couldn’t see it, the ad must have been veiled, and this also meant that Nita was neither magical nor magically immune. “It sounds kind of Victorian, doesn’t it?” I said. I finished my lunch, then made excuses about getting back to the store. “Mind if I take this?” I asked, picking up the magazine.
“Why? You think you need to learn social graces?”
“No, there’s an article I thought Teddy would be interested in.”
“Sure, take it,” she said with a wave. “I get a stack of them every month. The idea is to give them away.”
Once I got into investigation mode, it was hard to stop myself, so on my way back to the store, I detoured by the courthouse square to see if anything was going on. It appeared to be the kind of day that put the “sleepy” into “sleepy little town.” Not much of anything was stirring, especially not a robed wizard. The statues remained reassuringly still.
Then I took another look at the roof. There were gargoyles on part of the courthouse, but I didn’t recall ever seeing any on this side. I tensed as a gargoyle unfurled its wings and soared down to ground level. That was certainly something I’d never seen the courthouse gargoyles do. It was, however, something I’d seen gargoyles do often enough in New York, particularly this one.
“Sam!” I cried out and ran to hug him. I had to bend a little because gargoyles aren’t genera
lly that big, and he folded his wings around me in a hug. I realized then that I’d never touched him before. He had an odd texture, simultaneously rocky and leathery. “I’m glad they sent you,” I said when we broke apart.
“Hey, wouldn’t have missed it for the world, doll. Besides, who’d you expect them to send other than their top gumshoe?”
“I’m glad they sent the best.”
“What appears to be the deal?”
I explained quickly about the things Mom had seen and what I’d observed. When I finished, Sam nodded. “Okay, looks like I’ll be staking out the square here for a while, get an idea what the perp’s up to, and then I can figure out what to do about it.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ve also found something I want to check out.” I told him about the magazine ad.
He made a whistling sound, like the wind blowing across the top of a Coke bottle. “That’s not good.
You think that’s what our local wizard is up to?”
“Could be. There’s a Web address, so I’ll go look it up, and I’ll keep you posted on what I find. Want me to stop by on any particular schedule?”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’m officially on the case, so you can stand down. I’ll find you if I need you. This place ain’t a tenth the size of Manhattan, and I can find you there.” Actually, the incorporated landmass of the town wasn’t too much smaller than Manhattan Island, but I knew what he meant.
“Okay, then. Let me know if you need anything. Oh, and remember that you might have to be careful.
People are more likely to notice little oddities and ask about them here than they are in New York.
News spreads fast. Plus, my mom’s immune, and I think my grandmother might be, too. I have other relatives around, so there’s no telling how far that trait spreads.” It would be ironic if this town turned out to be the nonmagical capital of the world from being the home of more immunes than any other place. That would actually explain a lot about how boring the place was.
“Got it. Now shoo so I can get on with my stakeout.”
Don't Hex with Texas Page 5
