After a long pause, Randall looked at me and said, “In five days, I’m going to get married. I’m heading toward that end zone, ball’s in my hands. All my defenders are behind me, chasing me… but I keep thinking I’m going to trip. I’m not going to get across the line. Or the ball’s going to slip. Do you know what I mean?”
Absolutely not. “Sure,” I said.
“And is Trish the ball? Or the end zone or the field? What is she?” he said, in genuine concern.
“Randall, there’s such a thing as being too literal with a metaphor. Life’s not football.”
“Oh, now I’m even more confused.”
“I need to go make tea,” I said, and I stepped through the kitchen doorway, mentally bracing myself for the mess that was going to be in there, left by the sisterly kidnapping of the day before.
What I did not expect, and which nearly made me shriek before I exhibited the self-control a witch ought to, was the man sitting on the floor in the middle of the kitchen. His back was to me, leaning against the large pastry cart, his head slumped over.
Hank the Warlock was in almost exactly the same position that Sibyl and I had trapped him in just a couple nights before, only now he was apparently there voluntarily. And he’d fallen asleep. Cradled in his lap was the little tablet computer that had been left here when Lucy and I had both been… what was the word, because I did not want to continually think that my sister had kidnapped me…
Extracted. Except that makes us sound like bad teeth. Hmm…
While thinking, I reached out automatically and casually scratched Kashmir on the head, before I even consciously realized the cat was there, sidled up right next to me.
I looked at him, and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Yes, he’s been there since about two in the morning,” Kashmir said, not bothering to make his voice the least bit quiet. The only response from Hank was a snort. His head moved slightly, then slumped back down.
“Did you cast a spell on him?” I asked. “How did he even get in here?”
“Well, he was wandering around the place, looking for something to break to get in, so I opened the doors for him. Save you the trouble of repairing a window.”
“What? So if a burglar streams into the place—”
“Do burglars stream?” Kashmir asked, licking a paw in nonchalance. “I thought they prowled.”
“Not the point… and why didn’t you do anything when Sibyl came into the place yesterday? It was like you weren’t even here. Shouldn’t you have been my rescue squad… or something?” I said, my voice getting louder as my upset with Kashmir grew.
“Well, I am your familiar as you do your magic. And if you would let me, I would work with Lucy and with Sibyl, because Grand-Mere wanted all three of you to get along. After all, it will require a great deal of strength, moral and supernatural and otherwise, to weather the coming storms.”
“The coming storms,” I said, exasperated. “What, do you have a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper somewhere? Are you a psychic little kitty?”
Kashmir flexed his whiskers, and looked like he couldn’t be more bored by what I was saying. The little…
“So, you won’t lift a hand against my sisters? I remember distinctly you forcing Lucy to get up onto that counter over there and try to fight you off with a broom.”
“She wasn’t a witch then, she wasn’t using magic. Now all of you are.”
“Yes,” I said. “Now that I have the book—”
“Here? Now? Did you bring it?” Kashmir leapt to all fours and moved around in a circle, like his small body couldn’t contain his sudden excitement. “Close the shop, turn away the customers. Throw this idiot into the alleyway. Let’s get to work!”
“No, I do not have it on hand,” I said, holding out a hand to calm him. He slammed his little kitty head into my palm making me bounce back. Boy, that little kitty had some big kitty muscles.
“What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know the most important thing is—”
“The most important thing right now, Mr. Kashmir, is that I keep my sisters out of trouble, and that we all work together to figure out what the heck is going on - why that man was murdered, why there are demons coming out of the woodwork, and why… why all the other things. So, until we do that—”
“Could you keep it down? Some of us are trying to sleep.”
I whirled as Hank spoke, getting my head together to be ready to unlock whatever spells Grand-Mere had built in this place. It seemed a little lazy to keep making the floor go slippery, but hey - if it works once, it can work again.
“Don’t move a muscle,” I said, holding my hands out in a defensive posture. He’d silently gotten to his feet, and had turned to face the both of us. His gloves were off, and his fingers had the charcoal lines on them which meant he had some spells prepared.
“You know that cool green fire thing I used to save us both from what was almost certainly our doom, the night we met?” Hank said, snapping his fingers. Green sparks flew out from them, and I did what I had to. The ground became spongy, slick, hard, anything to make him lose his footing.
He took a step forward… and nothing. Then another step, and I could see a very subtle, very slight green glow underneath his shoes. I gasped and took a step back, glancing for the nearest heavy kitchen instrument. Unfortunately, I was on the wrong side of the kitchen, toward the large back fridge and away from all of the implements of food preparation: big knives, heavy mallets, thick and sturdy rolling pins. The corner I’d backed into, the nearest handy thing was a thin wire basket Lucy had left out.
“The cool thing about the fire,” Hank intoned helpfully, “is that when you’ve worked with it for as long as I have, and it’s been a couple decades, you can really manipulate it in fine, subtle, some might even call ingenious ways. Like right now, it is forming kind of a film beneath my shoes so that I’m not walking on your floor. I’m walking on the fire.”
Kashmir yawned, and sniffed the air. “He could probably keep it up for two, three minutes tops, Mimi,” he said.
Hank glared back at the cat. “I knew he was your familiar. Who else could have let me in? But all night, I tried to get him to say something, to absolutely no avail. We’re going to have words, cat.”
Kashmir spat contemptuously.
“But he is right, I can’t keep it up forever, so I want to propose something.”
“What’s that?” I said, my hand on the basket. It was made from metal… but of very light material. If I hit him with it, really hard, I was more likely to bend the basket completely out of shape than to do any serious harm to him. Maybe give him a little scrape.
“A truce is what I propose. Neither of us use our magic, or do anything to even inconvenience the other until we’ve completely cleared the air.”
“No,” I said. “Not until you give me a good reason why you would break into my shop.”
“Because I figured it was the safest place in town away from those witches down the street.”
“You mean your lunch buddies?” I said, hands on hips.
“I mean, one of the groups of people I was assigned to come to Lafay and investigate to find out just what’s going on here.”
I waited for him to explain himself, tapping my foot, trying to figure out some other sort of defense I could have mustered. My refrigerator was big, but it wasn’t the walk-in freezer type that a large restaurant might have used. I had this weird vision of him charging me like a bull, and me dodging to the side, making him slam right into the big fridge door, but who knew how fast he could maneuver walking on fire?
And I also still kinda wanted to like him.
“Who else were you sent to investigate?” I finally asked.
“Well, you, of course.”
“Why?”
“Because somebody is doing magic for hire. Someone’s selling magical products with the intent of getting lay-people to use them, turning what should be a community calling into something dangerous, something l
ikely to bring too much attention on magic use throughout the whole country.”
I scowled, then made a little gesture with my face, a shaking of my head. Which Hank must have misinterpreted as me telling him, “No”, because he shouted and lifted his hands in the air.
Not casting a devastating spell, I realized a second after I shrieked and hit the deck. He was just exasperated and showing it.
“Look, Mimi,” he said—
“I took the spell off. That’s all that was, me shaking my head. It was me taking off the spell.”
“Hmm? Oh. Okay.” He tapped his fingers against each other, and the little green light underneath his shoes went out. He shifted a little, and took a tentative step on the ground, and then did not fall down like a cartoon character walking on ice. He stepped over to me, putting his gloves on, and held out his hand.
I took it, a little weakly, and gave him a quick shake.
“Why were you investigating me? You could have just asked me, I’d tell you that the Jiggs were selling magic out of the back of their store. I might even have some of their used-up scrolls. If you’d trusted me—”
“Until my investigation, I couldn’t know who or what to trust. And bear in mind, they said the exact same thing about you. Thank goodness it wasn’t true. Just think if both of the witch families in town were selling magic, or magic laced products. It’d practically guarantee we get a crew of officials here to throw you guys into long, dark holes for long, long time.”
I chuckled. “Well, actually…”
Chapter 20
While I’d explained everything to Hank, he only looked like he was about to use fell and dark magic to knock me out and arrest me once or twice, and he looked really conflicted about it. So that’s good, I think. The thing was, I explained it in ways that I felt were honest, and that put everybody in the best light without sugar-coating anything.
And his takeaway was, “An undertrained minor was allowed to use an unsecured book of magic power to create objects for the mind-enslavement of unsuspecting victims.”
Which was technically true, I supposed, but that was like saying that going a couple miles over the speed limit was ‘transgressing fundamental safety procedures while operating a multi-ton device capable of great destruction’, or something. Your car went a little too fast. Lucy’s cookies tasted a little too brainwashy. It happens.
This explanation didn’t entirely satisfy him, but I didn’t have any more time and told him so.
“I’ve got to get some scones cooking, I’ve left an apparently brain-addled man out in my shop for all this time, wow, and I have regular customers coming.”
“Don’t you think this is all more important?” Hank said, looking a little full of himself.
I shook my head, and that time I wasn’t doing any Bewitched little nose twitches. I was telling this guy, this man busting into my kitchen hiding from our mutual enemies, under my roof, that no, what he thought was important wasn’t always what I thought was important. My roof, my rules.
“You can help me bake scones. Are you any good at it?” I said.
“I don’t fill my baked goods with the essence of world-shattering power in order to force people to become slaves to my will, so I don’t think I could do any worse.”
“Snotty,” I said. “And factually incorrect. Lucy wasn’t enslaving them to anything but… the hots she had for the star of a TV show.”
“Hmm,” he said, but after I showed him a few written recipes, I left to see if a shambles had been made of my shop.
It might seem nuts to leave an amateur there in my professional baking environment, but I had a couple of reasons to be confident. First, he was a good user of magic, so he had to be good at paying attention to details and proportions. Baking was magic, after all. Second, Kashmir, who had lain sleeping blandly through our entire confrontation, yawned himself awake finally, and watched Hank with one open eye. I knew he would supervise the baking without having to ask.
Third… I wanted to trust Hank, and this was a way to show him that.
I pushed through the kitchen door, expecting the worst. Randall had looked like he was about to either ex, or im, plode. Either he’d be a puddle on my floor or he’d be chewing things off of my walls. Either way, bad look for a calming place like a tea shop.
“Oh, here she is. Making us wait, Mimi,” was what greeted me, coming from the beaming, glowing face of Trish Tarkington. She could smile and smile and still say nasty stuff, and seemed to think you were supposed to like it. Two could play at that game.
“Hi, Trish,” I said, in my friendliest, down-homiest way. I was about to lean-in and ask if Randall was okay, but the expression on his face stopped my words. He looked fine. Not just fine, he no longer had that ‘workout has killed me’ look, but rather the fresh look of a man who has just jumped out of a cold lake, a morning’s swim having invigorated him. He even had one of Trish’s famous boutonnieres now adorning his previously plain suit.
“Thanks for letting me in here early, doll,” Randall said. “I was having one of those episodes, honey.” He gave her a nod of his head to show that she should know what he meant, so he wouldn’t have to spill more beans in front of the interloper, namely me. I gamely acted like I hadn’t heard a thing while I began putting settings down on the table.
It was the last chance to make any changes, and I had been beating my brains out finding the right combination of lace tablecloths, napkins, and place-settings, as well as finding some place where I could rent proper silverware. That’s a thing, people do it, but sourcing it locally was hard. It would have been a lot easier had there not been a murder in town that was for some reason directly connected to everyone I knew.
“Okay, so, it would have been perfect,” I said, when I saw they were reduced to murmuring at each other and not seriously talking, “If I could have had all of this out and ready to go before you arrived. So you wouldn’t have to see how the sausage was made. But we can have these set up quickly, as per your wishes.”
Trish had an elaborate set up for the wedding planned, which included having a patch of lawn open for picture taking before the event that would have to be transformed, while the ceremony was going on, into a high tea wonderland while everyone else was inside the chapel, watching the blessed union.
It was like a guarantee that things would go wrong, especially this being my first wedding. Especially with ten tons of logistics getting ready to bite me right on the—
“Looks fine,” Trish said.
I turned, and practically had to grab my jaw to keep it from falling right open. For Trish, nothing is ever fine. Everything has a thousand details that have not been done quite right.
“Um… the place setting will have the pink roses and—”
“No, I’ll be providing the place settings. What you said yesterday really struck me, Mimi, and I took a look at the flowers I had and thought, what would make the tea more special than having a flower from my own garden right there. Like I’ve grown my own piece of this happiness, and I’m sharing it with everybody.”
“Oh, honey, that’s lovely.”
I smiled, and nodded, and inside quelled so much screaming. Settings were already bought, and ready to be delivered a couple of days ahead of time, I had refrigerator space set aside for them. To add some new flowers…
“So, you’ll be augmenting the settings that we’ve already got?”
“No, cancel those. I’ll be doing that whole part.”
Cancel. I saw that not happening, and my potential profits from this venture dwindling into the barely break even category. And the chances that Trish, who must have been going mad with her own preparations, would actually pull through and give me those settings? Ugh.
I was saved from actually speaking any of my treacherous mind by the kitchen door swinging open, and Hank coming out. Wearing an apron over his dark coat and shirt, he looked like something from a jump cut in a sitcom, as if he’d just said the words moments ago: “Well, one thing’
s for sure. You won’t get the apron on me.”
“Mimi, here’s the first batch. Fresh out of… hello,” Hank said.
Trish pointed, and the question was on her lips, though she maybe thought it was impolite to actually speak it.
“That’s my new baking assistant. Taking him on provisionally to help out with the wedding and see if he can make himself useful in other ways.”
“Hmm,” Trish said, immediately bored. I didn’t bother to see what kind of look Hank was giving me, because my door opened and the yarn-clogged Groves sisters came charging in, looking very determined and serious, despite each carrying yarn animals that looked like they came from Dr. Seuss’s fever dreams. Finally, the day was starting to look normal.
When you’re having a bad day at work, every time you look at that clock not move it’s an agony. The opposite it also true - when work is a respite from bad stuff happening elsewhere in your life, it’s like somebody’s hired evil little fairies to push those clock hands faster and faster, so that the simple work problems: I need tea! I need a scone! Those are solved super-quick. The difficult horrible problems at home (involving murders, these days, sad to say) are just coming around the corner.
But four o’clock (my Monday closing time) raced on despite my asking it politely not to, and while Hank and I cleaned up the kitchen together - for he stayed in that kitchen the whole darn day and did a creditable job at baking anything I’d asked him - we still hadn’t talked about any of the important things that we needed to.
Like why I should trust him, why he should trust me, and how we were going to get through the week without someone else getting killed by demons. That kind of thing.
Until I turned the closed sign, and he was standing in the kitchen door, propping it open, looking at me with all kinds of meaning in his expression that I wanted to ignore. Kashmir took advantage of the open door to leap up onto the store counter, find some cream, and slurp it with a complete disregard for his surroundings and all the nice things I would do for him if he behaved.
Never Date A Warlock (Sister Witchcraft Book 4) Page 16
