Daddy Warlock

by Jacqueline Diamond

  Harry’s dubious expression vanished. “Yeah! We can make the toy boats sail faster! And tickle the ducks’ behinds!”

  He jumped up, ready for action. Chance found himself grinning as he uncoiled from his too-small seat.

  Tickling the ducks’ bottoms sounded like fun.

  TARA HAD WORKED LATE Monday night, helping Chance review the latest economic reports. It was a relief to have Tuesday morning off, while her seemingly tireless employer headed for the office.

  After a week on the job, she was beginning to settle in. A person could definitely feel at home here, she reflected as she stretched lazily in bed, watching the clock tick past 9:00 a.m.

  Chance had taken Harry to school, another sign of the pair’s growing closeness. Seeing them spend so much time together made her vaguely uneasy, knowing that this relationship would be only temporary. Yet she couldn’t deny that her son was thirstily soaking up the male attention.

  Boys needed fathers, she thought. Of course, plenty of mothers raised their children alone and did a terrific job, just as Tara intended to do.

  But being a single mom sometimes reminded her of what it had been like when she was younger and drove a rickety car whose rearview mirror had fallen off. She’d managed, but there was always the sense of something missing.

  Tara chuckled. Men were hardly the same as rearview mirrors.

  As she showered and dressed, she recalled how Chance had looked last week in his slim trunks, reclining in the whirlpool bath. More than his muscular chest and comanding presence, she’d been drawn by the silver gleam in his eyes.

  This weekend, although they’d gone their separate ways outside of mealtimes, she’d noticed occasional sideways glances from the man as if there were some kind of link between them. Could he be considering his aunt’s nonsense about past lives?

  Toweling off, she wondered exactly how far Chance’s faith in intuition reached. He’d certainly made a point of discussing it in the hot tub.

  How could such a down-to-earth man believe in the supernatural? But perhaps he hadn’t really meant ESP and psychic phenomena, but rather some form of New Age spirituality.

  With relief, Tara embraced that possibility. Slipping into jeans and a short cotton sweater, she admitted silently that this enigmatic side of Chance had worried her, for reasons she couldn’t grasp.

  But spirituality was another matter. Tara wasn’t religious but she respected those who were, and hoped that someday she would experience a deeper faith herself. Perhaps Chance had been referring to theology and she’d failed to grasp his meaning.

  That comforting conclusion enhanced her appetite, and she took the shortest route to the kitchen, through the courtyard. Vareena, who had today off from her convenience store clerking job, was playing the boom box at a low volume and practicing dance steps by herself.

  “Only six weeks until the contest!” she called as Tara went by. “We must not waste a moment!”

  Such dedication was commendable, Tara thought as she slipped into the opposite wing of the house. She hoped she could watch Rajeev and Vareena compete. Even if they didn’t win, she wanted to cheer them on.

  The coffeemaker on the kitchen counter was half-full, and she fixed herself two slices of toast. “We’re a little low on eggs but there’s enough for an omelet,” advised the house computer. It rarely spoke unless addressed but seemed to take a proprietary interest in the kitchen.

  “Have you decided on a name yet?” Tara asked.

  “I’m considering Ma Maison and Mi Casa,” said the nasal voice. “Although they do make me sound like a restaurant, don’t you think? I’m looking for something familiar but with a touch of grandeur.”

  “How about the Starship Enterprise?” Tara suggested.

  “There’s no need for sarcasm.” The computer signed off with an indignant beep.

  After breakfast, Tara decided to read the newspaper in the courtyard and soak up some sunshine. Vareena had vanished, and the open space sat quiet in the morning light.

  Stepping out, she let the rays wash over her face. She always felt at home out here, surrounded by the house and yet in touch with the sky and the wind.

  Springtime flowers—pansies and poppies and petunias—overflowed the small planters. The fountain sprang to life as she came near, its twin sprays fanning and swirl- ing in an everchanging design.

  A padded bench provided a place to sit facing the rear of the house. Although she had intended to read the paper, Tara let herself float in a sunny mental haze.

  Even out here, she caught an almost subliminal whiff of the scent that pervaded the house—masculinity touched with the essence of herbs. She seemed to remember it from long ago.

  Long ago, right here.

  Blinking against the sunshine, she stared at the curving stairway the led to the second-floor balcony. Since moving in, she hadn’t given much thought to what might lie in the tower, but now it whispered of wonderful secrets.

  She had no business entering Chance’s private rooms, Tara scolded herself sternly. On the other hand, he hadn’t said that she couldn’t look around the house.

  Without realizing she was rising, she moved toward the stairs. What harm could it do to explore?

  In the back of her mind, Tara noted that something was amiss. This odd, sleeplike state shouldn’t be seizing her in the middle of the day. It was as if she walked through a dream, a dream that she had experienced before.

  None of it made sense, but the tower room was calling. All things would be explained, once she arrived.

  Up the stairs Tara glided, and onto the balcony. The doorknob to the tower room turned easily in her hand and she went in.

  Disappointment quivered through her. There was nothing here, just a round room with a polished wooden floor. Not even furniture.

  “House?” she ventured. “What is this place?”

  “What would you like it to be?” said the house. “A bedchamber? An office? He’s stashed all kinds of things in the walls.”

  “In the walls?” Tara noted for the first time that the walls were pierced by thin cracks outlining rectangles and other shapes. “How about a bedroom?”

  From the rear wall descended a bed with a soft covering. Panels slid open on the walls, revealing an oak dresser. Velvet curtains, which had been hidden within a valance, lowered themselves across the windows.

  She remembered this place, and a man too. The name that came to mind was not a name, though, but a description: the Magician.

  A mask covered his face but the eyes glowed silver as they bored into hers. Shudders ran through Tara. Something held her transfixed, half in dream and half in wakefulness, bathing in partially remembered details and trembling with the impossibility of it.

  “Isn’t this clever?” chattered the house. “Would you like to see the office?”

  “No, thank you.” Numbly, Tara stumbled out onto the balcony. She had been to this house before. It wasn’t from a scene from a movie, or a trick of the mind. And that figure in the black cloak and mask…She did know him. She knew him intimately.

  Thank goodness for the heat of the day, soothing her shaken spirit so she could think more clearly. What exactly had happened here, and what did it have to do with Chance?

  Before she could sort out her jumbled impressions, Rajeev hurried into the courtyard. “Miss Blayne?” he said. “Ah, the school has called regarding your son.”

  “Is he all right?” She went down the stairs at a rapid clip.

  “It seems that he is well,” said Rajeev. “But as for the school itself, who can say?”

  HARRY WISHED he could wipe the alarm and confusion from his mother’s face. Things really weren’t so bad, but that was hard to prove, with the principal soaked to the skin, the leaves blasted off a bush in front of the school and the fire captain turning three shades of red.

  “There wasn’t any real damage,” he protested as Mom knelt on the floor to bring her face level with his. A bunch of other people stood around the front o
ffice, glaring at him.

  “But there could have been,” she said. “The principal says you climbed into the fire truck and turned on the hose. Is that right?”

  “No!” Harry started to get mad. Grown-ups shouldn’t tell lies, especially about little kids. “Where’s Chance? He’d understand.”

  “I’m the one who needs to understand.” His mother wiped a wisp of hair from her forehead. “Now let’s see. The fire fighters were visiting for Fire Prevention Week, and the kids were checking out the fire truck. Then what?”

  It was hard, he discovered as he talked, to explain this stuff. Mom couldn’t seem to grasp the obvious, like why Harry had persuaded Al to climb into the cab and turn on the siren.

  “It made him a hero!” he explained with all the patience he could muster. “The kids were, like, ‘Wow!’ And I did talk him into it, Mom. I didn’t make him do it”.

  “Then what?” she asked wearily.

  This was going to be tough to get across. Nobody had believed him so far.

  In fact, they’d gotten so confused that the fire captain was swearing it had been Harry in the cab and not Al. What made it even more complicated was that Harry felt he ought to take the blame, because in a way he was responsible.

  “Well, the captain started to grab Al, so I thought, what if he thought there really was a fire? Then Al would be a hero for sounding the siren, right?”

  “Keep going,” said his mother.

  “So I—” Harry took a deep breath. “I know Chance said I shouldn’t, but I put this idea in the captain’s mind. Like that the front of the school was on fire. He started shouting to the other guys to hook up the hoses, and then, wham! There was water everywhere! They even got the principal!” It had been awesome. “Only, they’re kind of mad now.”

  “Honey, you couldn’t have put an idea in the captain’s mind.” Mom let out a sigh. “You have to tell me the truth.”

  “It is the truth! Ask Chance!”

  “What’s he got to do with this?” She wore a tight, unhappy expression that scared Harry a little.

  “He’s been helping me. You know how I made the fork turn around in the air? Well, I can do other stuff, too. Really neat stuff with people’s minds, but Chance says I shouldn’t. He can explain it better than I can.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t sort this out right now, Harry. I certainly can’t contradict a fire captain who was an eyewitness.”

  She stood up, and Harry felt as if he were stranded on Mars with his last link to Earth cut off.

  He heard his mother apologizing to the other grownups. Then the principal said the word suspended a couple of times and gave his mother a paper to sign.

  Finally, Mom took Harry’s hand and led him out of the office to her car. He turned toward the school yard and saw his classmates lining up for lunch. Two of the kids were fighting over who got to stand next to Al.

  At least he’d done some good today.

  ON THE DRIVE HOME, Tara couldn’t begin to make sense of what had happened. Why was Harry lying to her, and what did Chance have to do with it?

  Her son’s muddled explanation kept getting mixed up with the strange feelings she’d experienced in the tower room. She couldn’t stop thinking about Chance’s words a few nights earlier: People can do things that defy scientific principles.

  Had he been conducting experiments with her son? It was unthinkable.

  Then she nearly couldn’t find the house. For some reason, she kept wanting to turn left where she should have turned right. It was Harry who pointed out the landmarks and got her headed in the right direction.

  With mixed feelings, Tara pulled into the driveway and saw Chance’s car sitting in the open, as if he’d been in too great a hurry to put it in the garage. Was something wrong at work? She didn’t think she could handle another crisis at the moment.

  The front door stood open. With Harry on her heels, she hurried through the living room and into the courtyard.

  She was heading toward the rear office when she saw Chance standing on the curved stairs, as if he’d just emerged from the tower. Anger flashed from his eyes.

  “What were you doing up here?” he demanded. “The computer beeped me. It’s programmed to do that when anyone enters the tower.”

  “I didn’t know it was off-limits.” The way he held himself, erect and imposing, rang bells in her mind. He had stood this way before, and she had watched him from this angle. Unable to pinpoint the memory, Tara rushed on. “Harry got into trouble at school. He claims you were working with him on some kind of—of mind games.”

  Chance’s anger turned cold. “Harry?”

  “I didn’t mean to!” the boy blurted. “Honest, I didn’t. I just talked Al into turning on the siren and he was going to get in trouble so I made the fireman think the school was on fire! That’s all.”

  “What’s he talking about, ‘making’ the fireman think something?” Tara gritted her teeth with impatience as Chance descended the stairs.

  He regarded her assessingly, his gaze hooded. Mistrust flooded through her. Always before, the man had struck her as frank and honest, but now she saw only calculation in his manner.

  He was up to something. But what on earth could it have to do with her son?

  “Harry,” Chance said, “if you’ll go into my private den, there’s a new video game you can play. Your mother and I need to talk.”

  The boy brightened. “Cool! Now that I’m suspended, I’ll have lots of time to play!”

  “Suspended?” Chance said.

  “Go on, Harry.” Tara shooed him away. “Mr. Powers is right. We do have a lot to talk about”.

  They went into the office. Its windowed length was flooded with sunlight, but today it seemed full of shadows.

  Sitting stiffly in a straight-backed chair, Tara recounted the morning’s events. She expected Chance to dismiss her son’s story, but he listened with resignation.

  “Something like this was bound to happen,” he said when she finished.

  “Something like what?”

  “The boy’s gifted, Tara. Remember those special abilities we were talking about? I know you don’t want to believe in them, but for Harry’s sake you must”

  She gripped the arms of the chair, fighting a wave of disbelief. There were no such special talents, whether they involved making forks dodge in midair or planting hallucinations in people’s minds.

  “I believe one thing,” she said. “You’ve been putting ideas in my son’s head. What were you doing, working with him behind my back? All the time you made me think you cared about him.”

  “I do.” Chance leaned forward on the couch. “I was trying to break the news gently because I knew it would be hard to accept.”

  “What news?” she said.

  His jaw worked, and she could see he was choosing his words with care. “My hiring you wasn’t entirely a coincidence.”

  “You did see him on television!” The man’s duplicity took her breath away. He lived in a beautiful house and spoke soothing words, he was respected and admired by his entire staff, but he’d been using her to get to Harry. “You imagined he had some hidden talents and you wanted to subvert them!”

  “No!” The denial rasped from him. “Just the opposite, Tara! I want to protect him and teach him how to control his ability. If I don’t, someone like my father will exploit him.”

  She stood up, hoping he couldn’t see her hands trembling. “We have to leave. I can’t trust you around my son anymore. He has no magical abilities, but for some reason that I can’t fathom, you believe he does. He’s just an ordinary little boy with a vivid imagination.”

  “He does have gifts, and they’re going to create more trouble if he doesn’t learn to harness them,” Chance said.

  “Why do you keep insisting on this?” Tears threatened to wreck her composure, but Tara pressed on. “It’s outrageous! Just leave us alone!”

  “I can’t leave you alone,” he said. “I’m responsible for Harry
. I’m his father.”

  A chill robbed her of movement. She couldn’t even shout a denial, because, incredibly, his claim made sense.

  That was why she kept remembering this house and the courtyard and the tower. Chance was the Magician. For some perverse reason, he believed he really could work sorcery, and so could his son.

  His son. Fury and pain raged ihside her. After all these years, how dare he come forward?

  He had seduced her and then made no attempt to find her again. Nor had she tried to find him, but that was because her memory had been so clouded and confused.

  What had Chance done to her that night? She hadn’t felt drugged, exactly, but rather as if—as if—

  As if he were controlling my mind.

  The possibility frightened her more than anything that had happened today. Tara took a step toward the door. “You have no right to him,” she said. “I won’t let you have him.”

  “I have no intention of seeking custody.” Through his grim expression shone a hint of concern, but she knew it must be feigned. “I only want to help him. And you. Tara, I’m sorry I haven’t been around all these years. I didn’t know he existed until I saw him on television.”

  “Well, forget you ever found out,” she snapped. “Forget you ever met us!”

  Then she ran for the door before she could embarrass herself by breaking into tears.

  CHANCE’S HANDS CLENCHED as he listened to the sounds of departure. Tara had packed in record time and was now dragging her protesting son out of the house as if the forces of evil were right behind them.

  When Rajeev peered into the room questioningly, Chance shook his head. They couldn’t stop Tara, not today. Catching his glower, the housekeeper beat a swift retreat.

  His son’s future was the most important matter Chance would ever confront, but he must not let his concern overwhelm his judgment. He couldn’t let himself think about Tara and how much he wanted to hold her again, either.

  In the short run, it might be possible to touch her mind and make her stay. But to manipulate her would be to prove himself unworthy, and to ruin any possibility of a lasting relationship with his son.