Second Chance Magic

by Michelle M. Pillow

  Lorna handed the jar over.

  “Do I even want to ask what she meant by magic powers?” William inquired as Vivien went inside.

  “Considering the feelings you expressed about such things earlier, probably not,” Lorna answered. When he didn’t speak right away, she said, “We all found rings last night and they’re stuck on our fingers. It’s a weird coincidence, that’s all.”

  “You all went jewelry shopping?” he asked.

  “No, I was home alone drinking too much wine and found mine in the apothecary cabinet. Heather was home alone after drinking with Vivien and found hers in a receipt box. And Vivien was also by herself and found one in a memory box,” Lorna said. “Spooky coincidence, right?”

  “I guess?” He didn’t look convinced.

  Lorna decided not to bother telling him about the mystical connection she and Vivien had shared when they’d touched hands. She’d always been open to possibilities beyond what she could see with her eyes. Something abnormal was happening to them. She felt it, even if she couldn’t fully explain it.

  “You were right. I had heard about what happened with your husband,” William said. “I didn’t mean to imply wanting answers from those who are no longer with us was a negative thing. I don’t know the details, and I don’t expect you to tell me unless you want to, but I wanted to say I was sorry if I made you feel bad by anything I said. My difficulties with my family heritage sound minor compared to what you must have been through.”

  Lorna didn’t sense malice in his words, but they still made her uncomfortable.

  “Anyway, I want you to know no one here has been speaking poorly about you, or what happened. I think you’ll find you have a lot of support if you want it.” He started to reach forward as if to touch her arm and then pulled back.

  Lorna nodded. “Thank you for saying that.”

  A knock on the glass door caused them both to turn. Vivien waved for Lorna to come inside. Lorna lifted her hand in acknowledgment and stepped toward the door.

  “Wait, there’s something else,” William said. This time he did touch her arm as he stopped her from leaving.

  “What?”

  His eyes steadily held hers and he leaned closer. The attraction she felt was unmistakable. It shot through her with a jolt of awareness. Sexual desire hadn’t hit her this strong since she was a hormonal teenager.

  Was he going to kiss her?

  Should she try to kiss him?

  Great, she thought, sarcastically. My mid-life libido chooses this moment to kick in.

  Lorna forced a deep breath, trying not to be obvious about her thoughts. There wasn’t going to be any kissing going on between them. They barely knew each other.

  “Go out with me sometime.” His voice had lowered. Or was that her imagination?

  This time Lorna was speechless for an entirely different reason. After their ineloquent conversation about dead people, she wouldn’t have guessed he saw her as dating material. Then again, what did she know about dating? She wouldn’t be able to read the signs even if they were bluntly spelled out in blinking neon four feet tall. Yes, she thought him broodingly sexy, but for him to return the interest?

  “Is that a question?” she asked.

  “Only if you say yes.” He smiled. The look softened his expression, making him appear almost playful.

  “Um.” Lorna glanced toward the theater. She began to overthink, her mind listing out all the reasons why she should say no.

  This was Heather’s brother.

  Heather was her boss and landlord.

  She would surely make an ass out of herself.

  She wasn’t ready to date… was she?

  “Maybe?” she finished weakly.

  “How about we say that’s a yes, and I’ll hope you don’t stand me up?” He took a step back, “Thursday,” and then another, “seven o’clock,” and yet another, “King’s Bistro. I’ll be the guy waiting with flowers.”

  Before Lorna could answer, William turned and strolled away.

  “But…?” The word was weak and he didn’t hear the protest.

  Vivien knocked louder than before to get her attention. Lorna reached for the door before she was close enough to touch it and stepped to the side while staring after William.

  The door opened before she could push on it.

  “What was that all about?” Vivien asked. “Next time, angle yourself more toward me so I can lip read what’s happening.”

  “William just asked me out,” Lorna said. “I don’t think I can go, though.”

  “Why the hell not?” Vivien demanded. “He’s beautiful. He’s sexy. He’s single. He’s a decent guy. He’s—”

  “My boss’ brother,” Lorna inserted.

  “Oh please,” Vivien dismissed. She strode toward the theater office and called, “Heather, do you care if Lorna dates your brother?”

  “As long as she knows he comes with warning labels and is a pain in the backside,” Heather answered, glancing up from the desk where she filled in an event booking form. Her eyes met Lorna’s. “Did he finally ask you? He’s been bugging me with questions about you since you two first crossed paths. I thought his gardener excuse hardly warranted a visit. My mother fires everyone. Ev-ery-one. I’ll send the same guys back and she’ll think I hired new lawn people for her.”

  “See, Heather doesn’t care. You should go and have fun,” Vivien said. “He’s hot.”

  “Not hot.” Heather shook her head and put her hands briefly over her ears. “My brother is a dork. He still has a comic book collection and thinks hanging up football jerseys counts as home decor.”

  “Hey, maybe Lorna’s into pleather couches with the cup holders built into the arms,” Vivien teased, placing her hand on her hip. “Why do you have to be so judgy?”

  “Actually, I don’t mind those,” Lorna inserted. She saw her jar of jelly had been placed on the desk next to the coffees. “Sounds practical.”

  “See, they’re a match made in pleather.” Vivien laughed. “She likes a living room with a mini-fridge next to the sofa and a seventy-inch television.”

  “I don’t own a television,” Lorna said. “I read.”

  “Perfect. He’ll have enough television for the both of you.” Vivien continued to smile.

  “I don’t think William has installed a dorm fridge next to his couch yet, but the rest of it isn’t too far off,” Heather said. “Who knows, Lorna, maybe some of your good taste will rub off on my bachelor brother. One can only hope.”

  “So he’s never been married?” Lorna asked.

  “Don’t answer,” Vivien interjected.

  “No. He’s never been married,” Heather said. “He says he won’t even consider it until he finds the right one, and when he does he’ll know.”

  “Leave them something to talk about on the date,” Vivien scolded.

  “I haven’t said I was going,” Lorna insisted.

  Both women looked at her like they knew she was lying.

  “Fine. I’m probably going,” Lorna mumbled.

  “You’re both adults. I’m staying out of it. Do whatever you like, but if it’s naughty I don’t want to hear the details,” Heather said.

  “I on the other hand want all the sordid details,” Vivien put forth. “And pictures if you can manage them. Video is better. Let me know if you want help picking out costumes for—”

  “And with those traumatizing thoughts,” Heather pushed up from the desk and tapped the stack of papers to make them even, “I’m going to go pour bleach on my brain until I forget I heard any of that.” She glanced up at the clock and then the security monitor of the front lobby. “The ballerinas will be arriving soon.”

  “I’ll start the popcorn and hotdogs.” Lorna reached over to grab one of the lattes out of the holder.

  “What about our ring power?” Vivien asked. “Aren’t we going to tell her?”

  “I should start cooking if everything is going to be ready in time,” Lorna said.

&nb
sp; “What ring thing?” Heather asked.

  Lorna held up her hand. “We all found one last night. It’s a strange coincidence.”

  “There is power in threes,” Vivien said. “Magic. Death. Julia always said to look out for multiples of three. This has to mean something. Like a sign.”

  “A sign?” Heather gave a small laugh.

  “Okay, not a sign. More like destiny,” Vivien insisted. “Inevitable. Fate.”

  “Inevitable?” Heather gave a slow nod but looked like she was humoring Vivien more than believing her. “Like how women our age start to get perimenopausal. So, not only do we get hot flashes, they come with decoder rings?”

  Lorna chuckled at Heather’s wit. She noticed one of the dance instructors on the security monitor coming in the front door. “I’m sorry, but I need to get out there. I don’t want my boss to fire me.”

  “I’ll fill her in on what happened in the coffee shop, and tonight we’ll meet here after the show,” Vivien said. As Lorna left to go to work, she swore she heard the woman add, “This is just like the sort of magical event your grandma used to talk about. Is Julia still haunting the place? Can you ask her if this means we’re finally real witches?”

  Chapter Five

  Lorna had two trains of thought on the matter of Julia Warrick haunting the theater if she allowed herself to believe in the possibility. First, it was a neat idea, a kind of up-late-playing-with-the-Ouija-board-girl-party scenario. Second, it was terrifying in the sense that she slept every night alone in the old building, and now every creak and whine would set her on edge. It seemed ridiculous that a woman in her forties would suddenly become afraid of ghosts.

  The ballerinas commanded an almost full house. Lorna watched the dancing mice performance from the back but found her eyes drifting to where she’d seen Heather acknowledge her grandma. No otherworldly beings were there amongst the living, at least none that she could see between the backs of heads.

  Lorna felt a gentle tap on her shoulder and turned around. Her arm bumped the curtain blocking the light from the front and she pushed through. Besides a woman coming from the restrooms, the lobby was empty.

  She rubbed her shoulder, realizing she must have leaned into something and mistook the feeling as a tap.

  Ace’s eyes met hers. It looked like he wanted someone to open the door to her apartment. Lorna made a move toward him. He waited until she was close and then turned to walk toward the office.

  “I can’t tell them that,” Heather said. “We’ve been through this.”

  Lorna stopped, trying to see who Heather spoke to. No one answered.

  “You shouldn’t have done it. You should have left well enough alone,” Heather insisted.

  Lorna frowned. Was she talking on the phone? To her mother about the lawn people perhaps?

  “Grandma, stop,” Heather commanded in a harsh, quiet tone. “I can’t hear you when you get like that. You know—dammit, did you just disappear? Grandma, get back here!”

  A cold chill worked up Lorna’s spine. She inched closer to see inside the office door. Heather stood alone with her hand on her head and her eyes closed as she sighed in exasperation.

  “Heather?” Lorna asked, leaning into the door to look around. Heather gave a small gasp at the interruption and dropped her hands. “Were you talking to someone?”

  “Just…” Heather glanced at the corner of the room and then back again. “Just to myself.”

  The office felt cold and Lorna rubbed her arms to warm them. “It’s freezing in here. Do you want me to turn off the air conditioning or shut the air vents? The rest of the building feels fine.”

  “No, it’s just a draft. It’s an old building. It happens,” Heather dismissed, again glancing toward the corner of the room.

  Lorna followed her gaze. An eerie feeling crawled across her skin.

  They weren’t alone.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to ask this, but…” She closed her eyes and gave a small shake of her head. “Are you talking to your dead grandmother Julia?”

  “I think the question you mean to ask is, ‘Is my dead grandmother Julia talking to me?’,” Heather corrected.

  Lorna opened her eyes. “Is she?”

  Heather rubbed her hand, not appearing like she wanted to answer.

  Lorna felt a tingle radiating down her arm from the ring. “May I see your hand, please?”

  Heather stopped rubbing her palm. Lorna reached across the desk. Heather hesitated before placing her hand in Lorna’s.

  A pulse of energy rushed through her, just as it had when she’d touched Vivien. Her vision dimmed. Heather stared at her, breathing hard. Her hair began to lift from static charge.

  Lorna felt a tightness growing in her chest, created from emotions that she did not recognize as her own. A shell began to form around it, both insulating it and trapping it deep inside her. Such hardness should have taken years to develop, built of pain and sorrow, but instead grew in an instant. The ache reminded her of the time Jacob had gone missing, only intensified. They’d found him playing in a neighbor’s shed, but that very specific kind of fear—that soul-shaking panic—was unlike any other feeling.

  She might have been able to dismiss the reaction as weird the first time, but now?

  Lorna pulled away. The direct sensation stopped, but the effects of Heather’s pain lingered.

  “If you tell me you see your dead grandmother, I’m inclined to believe you,” Lorna said. Each thump of her heart reverberated through her, but it did not lessen the anguish. Nothing could diminish this kind of pain, not really. Time made it more manageable, hardened a shell around it, but it was always there, always inside. “Something is happening to us, isn’t it? We’re becoming connected.”

  “I’m fairly certain that these rings belonged to my grandmother. She wanted us to find them and put them on.” Heather sat down in her chair. She tried smoothing down her hair before digging into the desk to find a hair tie.

  “Why?” Lorna moved to take a seat across from the desk and leaned forward.

  “She said our pain joins us. It called to her. It…” Heather glanced at the empty corner. “She says our meeting was destined.”

  “So you can talk to her ghost?” Lorna stared at the corner, trying to see any shift of light or color that might indicate a spirit was with them. There was nothing.

  “Yes. I see her. I don’t expect you to believe me. I’m aware of how crazy it sounds. I’ve been told my whole life it was my imagination.”

  “Are there others or just Julia?” Lorna didn’t know if it was her tingling hand, or her desire to want to believe such a thing were real that caused her to accept what was happening. Emotions were hardly empirical evidence, but they were real. “Can you see anyone with me?”

  “Glenn isn’t with you,” Heather said, clearly understanding what Lorna wanted to know. She pressed her fist against the center of her chest. “I’m so sorry. What I felt from you when we touched…” She took a deep breath. “That level of betrayal while feeling so much grief. The public embarrassment. The isolation afterward. I don’t know how you carry all that as gracefully as you do. A few seconds of it and I feel like I’m being pulled down into the floor. All I want is a blanket to hide under.”

  Lorna sat back in her seat. How could she complain about Glenn when Heather had lost a son?

  “Julia says he’s the source of your pain.” Heather pursed her lips tightly together and cupped her hands over her ears. “Your unasked questions, that deep betrayal, it’s why you were drawn to come here. You were meant to find us. That is why you moved here. It’s fate.”

  Lorna wasn’t sure her decision to move to the seaside town was destiny. The decision had been impulsive, spurred by her need to escape her situation. Heather dropped her hands from her head.

  “I’m not sure I would call it fate. The truth is, I couldn’t think of anywhere else I wanted to go. When my kids were around eight and ten, we drove through here on a family vacatio
n,” Lorna said. “Even though we didn’t stop for longer than it took to fill up with gas, I’d always remembered this town and wanted to come back. Jennifer had too much junk food and threw up in the car. Glenn was in a bad mood and hated it here. We drove back to Vermont with the windows open. It’s a hard vacation to forget.”

  All of those family memories were tainted now. They were followed by the thoughts whispering through her mind as if a force outside herself mocked her.

  He wasn’t your husband, not really, you old fool. All of those moments were built on a lie. Every touch between the two of you was meaningless.

  “Maybe that is fate. You felt drawn here the first time you drove through.” Heather turned to the security monitors. “I think the ballerinas are done.”

  “I can go out front.” Lorna flipped the switch by the office door to turn on the auditorium lights for the patrons. She made a move to leave.

  “No, stay,” Heather said. “They’ll rush the front door and the restrooms. We’ll go when they’ve filtered out. I don’t feel like making small talk with anyone tonight.”

  Lorna lowered herself back into her seat. She still felt like someone stood in the office with them. “You were right about your brother. William indicated he strongly doesn’t believe in this kind of thing.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Heather agreed. “He’s just like my mother. I think that’s why he’s her favorite. Grandma Julia always embarrassed her. She married into the Warrick family and never understood what she called the family eccentricities. But I told you that earlier.”

  “What about your father? If he was born a Warrick, then did he see things too?”

  “My father was sensitive, but I think he ignored that part of himself to keep my mother happy. If William has any of the family traits, he would never admit to it. We don’t talk about our family’s magic.”

  Lorna glanced at the empty corner, wondering if she would feel something if she put her hand through Julia’s invisible body. Or would that be considered rude? Then again, how could it be rude if she couldn’t see her? “Are there other ghosts? I mean, not here, but around?”