Lure of Song and Magic

by Patricia Rice

  With nowhere better to go, he took a seat at the counter and glanced at her new menu. She’d printed it on fake antique vellum. The formatting left a lot to be desired, but it was a menu. He pointed at the pizza with the most meat on it. “I’ll try this one. How’s business?”

  As if he couldn’t tell. He turned the stool around and leaned against the counter. The window had been washed until it gleamed. The floors didn’t have enough wax to sparkle, but they were peanut-shell free. Someone had put a lot of work and hope into a crappy hole-in-the-wall.

  He was supposed to be bringing customers up here. Lizzy—and a lot of other people—were pinning their expectations on him. And Pippa.

  It wasn’t all about him. He hated it when his brothers were right.

  “Business isn’t bad,” Lizzy said tentatively after calling the order to someone in the kitchen. “When are your people showing up?”

  Never, was his ornery response. But he kept his anger to himself, unlike a certain redhead who let her displeasure be known with slamming doors and gates. Why in hell should he listen to her if she never listened to him?

  “Director will be here tomorrow,” he said noncommittally.

  “Pippa is freezing up, isn’t she?” Lizzy said, grasping his problem with surprising insight. “She hates being in the spotlight. She’d be great in our little theater, but she won’t even come in and watch.”

  “If you know her that well, then you know she has her reasons,” he said grumpily.

  “Introverts don’t like attention,” Lizzy concurred, polishing the bar.

  So even Pippa’s best friend didn’t know who she really was. How could she possibly hope to hide her identity and still help the town?

  She hadn’t expected to have to live up to her part of the bargain. She hadn’t believed he would follow through on his promise to find her family. She’d meant to bow out and leave him with the books and the production and no star. He’d known that going in. He hadn’t known the depth of her problem then. He still didn’t grasp the whole of it, but he understood better.

  Pippa really didn’t want her face on television. Chances were excellent that even if he didn’t use her stage name, some media bozo somewhere would recognize Syrene all grown up. Oz couldn’t make any promises to the contrary. He couldn’t even be certain he wouldn’t use her stage name if that would get Donal back.

  “Can I get you a beer?”

  “Yeah, whatever’s on draft.” A strong one, if he had to sit here and muddle out where he was going with Pippa. He’d starve and go thirsty if he wanted any kind of relationship with a vegetarian opposed to alcohol.

  Did he want a relationship with a temperamental, neurotic former child star?

  A week ago, he would have said hell, no.

  Right now, he didn’t know what he wanted, except to punch someone or something. He glared at a tilting wooden booth and wondered if he could hammer it into place with his fists.

  Lizzy pushed a frosty glass across the bar. “Want me to talk to her? Her heart is in the right place. She wants to help. But I think someone hurt her badly, and now she’s afraid to come out of her shell.”

  A whole lot of someones had hurt her from what he could tell. And Pippa still fought back like a wildcat. He’d known that too. But after a few nights of great sex, he’d thought he’d tamed her. He was an idiot.

  He didn’t want her tamed. He wanted to unleash her on the world as she was—brilliant, captivating, talented, and moody as a bitch. He could live with that. Pippa would never in a thousand years sneak around behind his back, steal his son, and run off to Mexico.

  She was far more likely to hire the county police force, buy AK-47s, and go after the bastards on her own, without consulting him. Oz almost grinned at that.

  There was his problem. Pippa didn’t play well with others.

  And they had opposing views on a shitload of things, but he was the negotiator. He just had to remember that she wasn’t Alys. Alys had been weak and had never really accepted him as more than an ATM. She’d had her friends. He’d had his. There had been no connection on which to build trust.

  He figured he could trust Pippa, but he couldn’t ignore her as he had Alys, or she’d hit him upside the head. That would take some getting used to.

  “Give me a hammer,” he said.

  Looking at him oddly, Lizzy opened a toolbox under the counter and did as told.

  Setting his lips in satisfaction, Oz pounded the tilting booth back into place and looked around for more things to smack.

  ***

  Without all the background music from her computer, Pippa could do no more than scream into the microphone, unleashing the Beast in all its fury.

  Except this time, singing couldn’t help.

  Her mother was sitting by the pool, alone. Who knew what Conan was doing? And Oz… She strangled the wire and shrieked into the microphone until even Mars ought to hear her.

  The damned man needed a golf club taken to his head. Or a baseball bat. How could he possibly expect Syrene to go on stage?

  He knew what she could do with her Voice. He’d seen it for himself, even if he couldn’t hear it. Did she need to make his crew crawl before he’d acknowledge that she really was dangerous?

  How could he even think that it was safe to set her before an entire audience in some vague hope she might possibly be heard by his son, somehow, someway? It was ridiculous. Why didn’t he just set a bomb in the road and see if it found Donal?

  Why should she risk everything and everyone in a futile endeavor?

  She knew why, but she couldn’t admit it, so she screamed into the microphone until her voice was raw.

  Her familiar—safe—routines were gone forever. She had a mother. And responsibilities. And “Fail” signs blinked everywhere she walked.

  Dropping to the floor after half an hour of gyrating to her own music, sweat pouring from her forehead, Pippa sipped cold water from her cooler and tried to find a center of peace, but she was still off-kilter.

  Shit. She held the cold bottle to her forehead to cool off.

  She’d sung in concert with the best voices of her time when she was twelve. She’d filmed her first video at thirteen. She’d been on television at fourteen and touring at fifteen. She’d traveled the world.

  Surely she could do one small television show without killing anyone. Except maybe Oz. After all, she didn’t have to marry him. So maybe she wouldn’t drive him over a cliff. Just drive him to drugs. Like Robbie.

  With a sigh at her own fatalism, Pippa finished off her water, threw the bottle in the recycle container, and stretched.

  Oz had found her mother. The miracle had scarcely begun to sink in. She had a real family.

  She would be an unforgivable bitch if she didn’t help the man who had found her family.

  She might be a murderous one if she lost control. So she couldn’t afford to lose control. For an extended period of time, exposed to multitudes of strangers, she had to resist stress and find perfect inner peace.

  He might as well ask her to solve world hunger.

  ***

  Bearing pizzas as a peace offering, Oz returned to Pippa’s house to find a local furniture delivery truck parked in the lot. Wondering who made deliveries on a Sunday and why, he warily strolled down the path, looking for explanations.

  A muscular man with a clipboard emerged from the courtyard, nodded, and hiked back up the trail as Oz entered.

  Inside the house, he nearly stumbled over a desk that hadn’t been in the front room before. An unplugged computer sat beside it. Voices traveled from the bedroom hall.

  Oz knew he wasn’t going to like this. Setting the pizzas on the table, he shoved his hands into his pockets and wandered back to the bedrooms as if he belonged here.

  He wanted to bel
ong here. Like Ronan the Lonely Seal, he was searching for a home. That thought ought to jolt him, but he’d had enough jolting for one day.

  Hands in pockets, he stopped at the first door in the hall, the room that had once been Pippa’s business office. The shelves of books were still there, but now, instead of a desk and computer, she’d set up a brand new bed and mattress.

  He was pretty certain they weren’t for him.

  The women were making the bed. They looked up when his shadow fell across them.

  “My mother is moving in with me,” Pippa said, almost defiantly.

  He couldn’t very well say, What about me? He was pretty certain she was throwing up a wall between them. But he couldn’t argue that she needed to know her mother and that leaving the injured woman at the B&B was cruel.

  He had a place in L.A. to go to. Her mother didn’t. Yeah, he got that.

  “You think this is safe?” he asked, turning to Gloria, who looked a little overwhelmed.

  “I have no idea what I’ve done by coming to this town,” Gloria admitted. “I really don’t know if anyone cares if I exist anymore. The drug dealers are probably long since dead.”

  Oz nodded. “I may have caused more problems by finding Pippa in the first place.” He turned to Pippa. “Should I call you Siren now?”

  Her turquoise glare turned him on. Everything she damned well did turned him on. He wanted to drag her into the other bedroom and settle this in the only way they knew how.

  “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said in response to his question about her name, but it was the right response to his thought about settling arguments in bed too. They needed to learn how to communicate.

  “Are you staying at the B&B tonight or going back to L.A.?” she asked.

  Good question. Excellent question. He’d thought he’d be staying here, with her. With the damned woman who had sucked him into her crazy psychedelic world and taught him to hope again.

  “I’ll see you after story hour tomorrow,” he decided. “We won’t be using the Syrene name in this production, if that’s what’s bothering you. I left pizzas in the kitchen.”

  Without knowing where he was headed, Oz walked out.

  Chapter 27

  “I really dislike disrupting your life… Pippa,” Gloria said diffidently, staring at the pizza she’d placed on her plate but hadn’t eaten.

  “Disrupting? You’re giving my life back to me!” Oz had disrupted it, Pippa thought as she bit into his peace offering. She ought to be feeling guilty that he’d come here to make amends and she’d effectively thrown him out, but Oz needed to back off. If she had to adjust her entire way of life, she needed her space to figure out how.

  He was relying on Conan’s message to reach the Librarian, not her stage name. He was hoping her song alone could lure Donal. That was a concession so huge, she wasn’t certain how to take it. Relief and fear and indecision roiled into one big mass of confusion. And that was before she gave thought to sex with a man who wasn’t afraid of her.

  Gloria’s smile was tentative. “I’d like to hope that I can be useful, dear, but I’ve learned to live from one moment to the next. That doesn’t leave much room for dreaming.”

  “I’m rich,” Pippa said carelessly. “Stinking, filthy rich. I’m supposed to be able to do anything I like. I haven’t tried irresponsibility since I was a kid, but if wanting to get to know my mother is irresponsible, I’ll live with it. Maybe we can have Conan set you up with a new identity so you can feel safe. We can do anything we like. It’s a good feeling.” She didn’t have good feelings often, so when they happened, they were quite clear. Having her mother in her home made the world right, provided a balance she’d been missing. The connection between them was amazingly strong.

  “And have you been feeling good about what you’re doing?” Gloria asked, tasting a small bite of the pizza.

  Pippa thought about that. “I don’t feel bad about it,” she concluded. “I felt really rotten about my life before I threw away Syrene and learned to be me.”

  “But are you really being you?” Gloria inquired, apparently forming her words with care. “I don’t want to be a pushy mama before you’ve even come to accept I’m real, but I can’t help wanting my only baby to be happy.”

  Tears leaped to Pippa’s eyes. “Even if there’s some crazy mistake, you can still be my mama. I don’t think anyone has ever cared if I’m happy or not.”

  “I think Oz does, dear. He’s as worried about you as he is about his son, but I think he’s trying to give you… space?”

  Her mother was a mind reader. Great. Pippa angrily chewed her pizza, trying not to make hasty judgments, but she was still furious with him for not consulting with her first about where and when and how she would perform. “Oz has to try to give me space because his natural state is hovering bully. I had those types running my life for years. No more.”

  Gloria adjusted her injured hip to a better position, and Pippa resolved to find more comfortable chairs. She might have to consider buying a house closer to the road. She couldn’t expect her mother to regularly walk that uneven path.

  The thought of giving up her sanctuary didn’t set well. She glared at her hapless pizza and picked off a mushroom to pop in her mouth.

  “A child is easily bullied. I doubt that Oz or anyone can bully you now,” Gloria said with a degree of confidence. “I watched the two of you argue earlier, but it wasn’t one attempting to coerce the other. It was more an exchange of ideas and opinions. When necessary, you instantly united to fight a common foe. It was fun to watch.”

  Pippa smiled, remembering flinging Conan into the pool. That had felt good, even if she’d been so furious, she could have let him drown. Speaking without monitoring her Voice had felt good too.

  Singing would feel even better. Except she couldn’t unleash Syrene in public.

  She was treading dangerous waters now. “Have you listened to all my music?” she asked with wary curiosity.

  Gloria sipped her iced tea. “Nine years ago, when you disappeared from public view, I was barely aware of the world outside my room. I missed watching you grow up as a child star. I’ve bought your CDs since then and listened to your anguish in the unpublished songs the Librarian smuggled to me. You harbor a lot of anger, although I suppose you don’t need a meddling old woman to tell you that.”

  Pippa leaped up and hugged her mother in the first spontaneous gesture she’d offered in so long, she wasn’t entirely certain she remembered how. “You will have to learn to be who you are meant to be too! You’re not a meddling old woman. You’re a wise, wise woman, and I desperately need you around.”

  Humor tinted Gloria’s reply as she awkwardly hugged Pippa back without trying to stand. “You only need me around until you decide whether to accept Oz or drown him. If you choose drowning, you might need me a little longer.”

  “I can’t accept…” But she could. Her Voice didn’t affect Oz, so anything she said, he was taking at face value, not under some hypnotic influence. It was a liberating experience, knowing he was responsible for his own actions, not her.

  Yes, he was an insufferable bully, but if her mother was right, if she was strong enough to fight back… why should she throw away the one man who could actually hear her?

  Because she couldn’t give him what he wanted. Not now. Not ever. Even if they got past the TV show, she couldn’t live in L.A. Couldn’t entertain his guests. And would avoid the paparazzi-filled world that he thrived in.

  She sat down again and met her mother’s eyes across the table. “If you heard my pain, did you listen to my songs without whatever shield you erect when I speak?”

  “I tried, but sometimes it simply hurt too much,” Gloria admitted. “I cried for a week after hearing the seal song, but that could be because I remembered telling you the story. Some o
f the later songs the Librarian sent were so raw, even a shield couldn’t prevent your pain from seeping through.”

  “But the pain didn’t cause you to act oddly?”

  Gloria shook her head. “They made me cry or smile, like any good music does. I was desperate to find you, but the Librarian didn’t know where you were.”

  “She wasn’t trying very hard.” Pippa thought about that as she finished her pizza. “I used Philippa James Henderson on all my IDs after I left the music business. I dropped Robbie’s name before I signed the book contracts, but I was always known by my adopted parents’ name of James. Oz found me.”

  “Perhaps…” Gloria wrinkled her forehead, trying to work it out. “The website simply tracks the name Malcolm, and you quit using it.”

  “Possibly, although I still don’t understand that site. You said you used your Voice to help my father? Did you fight evildoers like in the comic books?” Pippa asked with a smile, because the whole idea was too much like one of her children’s stories.

  “Nana did her best to develop my skills, but at most, I have a slight siren talent and some empathic abilities.” Gloria didn’t appear particularly bothered by the lack. “I warned Jordie when I overheard the drug dealers closing in on him. I used my Voice to distract them so we got away. But I was mostly a threat because I knew too much and because they saw me as dangerous. I doubt that they feared I’d pass Nana’s lessons on to you, but that’s what hurt you most. Without my training, you were lost and scared when you could have helped so many.”

  Pippa scowled. “You think I can use my gift for good if I’m trained?”

  “There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to direct your talent once you learn how. Right now, you’re like a person with linguistic gifts who grew up in a world with only one language.”

  “You don’t really believe anyone is deliberately seeking us out, do you?” Pippa tried not to sound alarmed. “Because if by some freak chance we found Donal…”

  “If he has any extra abilities we could teach him to use, he might be in danger all over again,” Gloria agreed sadly. “I have no idea.”