by Mindy Klasky
I resisted the urge to fiddle with my silverware. Instead, I forced myself to look at him, to take in his open expression, the perfect bow of his lips. Maybe, just maybe, I could inoculate myself. If I stared at him long enough, often enough, I might become accustomed to his breathtaking appearance.
Yeah, right. Or maybe I’d just let the conversation lag so completely that I’d be embarrassed to ever say anything else, to even try to get it moving once again. “Business!” I said, clutching at a conversational straw. “Your card said Acquisitions. Are you a lawyer?”
I caught my breath, waiting for the answer. Please-don’t-be-a-lawyer. Please-don’t-be-a-lawyer. Don’t be anything like Scott Randall. Don’t be anything like my failed romances of the past.
“Hardly.” His eyebrows arched into an expression that would have been a sneer of disgust on a less refined face.
“I mean, a solicitor. Or a barrister. Or whatever they’re called.”
“They’re called both, for somewhat different services. And I assure you, I stay as far away from the law as I possibly can.”
I laughed at his rakish grin. “That makes you sound positively dangerous.”
“I can be,” he purred, and his smile was so intimate that I forgot to breathe.
“Madame. Monsieur.” I jumped as a waiter made his presence known. The man wore a white apron, and he had a harried expression on his long, droopy face. “Will you be dining with us this evening?”
My belly reminded me that it had been sent to dress without any supper, but I firmly squelched a positive reply. Graeme said, “Just dessert, thank you.”
The waiter barely stifled a sigh, but his eyes looked deeply pained. If he were an animal, I was certain he’d be a basset hound. A depressed one. “I’ll bring the cart.”
“Poor man,” Graeme said as soon as the waiter was out of earshot. “I didn’t realize that the Hundred Acre Wood had shipped out poor Eeyore to wait tables at the Bistro Francais.”
I laughed despite my nerves. “I suppose he was planning on earning a monster tip, hoping we’d order a five-course supper.”
“Alas for him. But ‘how shalt he hope for mercy, rendering none?’”
My jaw dropped. I mean, it was one thing for the man to know Prospero’s line from The Tempest; the play was performed all the time. But Merchant of Venice? And then, to temper the knowledge of Shakespeare by mentioning my childhood favorite, sagging old Eeyore…My heart swelled inside my chest.
I was spared the need for a witty Elizabethan rejoinder because the basset hound returned with the dessert cart. We were treated to a desultory explanation of the treats—almond cake, baba au rhum, chocolate éclairs, a towering croquembouche, triplets of tiny fruit tarts, crème caramel, napoleons, Strasbourg cake, St. Tropez cake, profiteroles…I gained five pounds just listening to the list.
When the waiter finished his recitation, Graeme waved an inviting hand toward the cart. “What pleases you?” he asked.
Oh so many things, I thought.
Melissa had a long set of rules about foods to eat on dates. I needed to avoid anything that would squirt onto my clothes, anything that would leave seeds in my teeth, anything that would be difficult to cut on a slippery plate with the small fork that would likely be my only utensil. What did that leave? And what could I choose that wouldn’t make me feel that I had betrayed Cake Walk?
Charmingly, Graeme misread my indecision. He said to the waiter, “Why don’t you bring us a few things. The almond cake, and the chocolate éclair, profiteroles, and…?”
He quirked an eyebrow toward me. How did he maintain his quarterback physique, eating multiple desserts? I hadn’t had any dinner, though, so I could splurge. Throwing Melissa’s cautions to the winds, I said, “The fruit tarts!” They were likely to slip about when I tried to cut them into bites, and the berries posed a threat to my otherwise gleaming smile, but I was willing to live life dangerously.
“And the fruit tarts,” Graeme told the hound. “And a decaffeinated coffee for me, with a Grand Marnier. Jane?”
“Decaf, also.” The waiter nodded and started to wheel his cart away. “And a Baileys!” I called, abandoning the last of my common sense. He nodded and sighed, as if I had just sentenced his youngest child to a lifetime banishment in the barbarian wilds outside the city walls. I settled back in the booth. “Mmm,” I said. “This is so decadent!”
“You see? Hardly the act of a barrister.”
“That’s right. But your card said ‘Acquisitions.’ What, exactly, do you acquire?”
“Whatever people need.” He smiled easily. “It’s like this. Say you read a magazine article, and it mentions a davenport owned by the Countess of Wessex. You decide that you can’t live without that very furniture in your own parlor. I’m the man to find the piece for you. And I won’t even tell the members of your bridge club where I found it. None of them will ever get the same piece.”
I laughed, trying to picture myself bidding trump or half-trump or no-trump or whatever it is that bridge mavens bid. “I’m not exactly the bridge sort.” I wasn’t about to say that I had two sofas, instead of davenports, and I had a living room instead of a parlor.
“What, then? Your book club? Is that what all the librarians go in for these days?”
“I don’t know about all the librarians, but I’ve been in a book club or two.”
“So you could hire me to find a lamp, say, so that you could read great world literature in style. Or a tall-case clock, or whatnot.”
“Acquisitions,” I said, as if it made all the sense in the world.
“At your service.” Graeme’s smile blinded me.
The waiter chose that moment to return with our buffet of desserts. He put a large coffee press on the table and shook his head sadly before finding the energy to tamp down our decaffeinated grounds. He poured two cups and set our alcoholic chasers to one side. “Will there be anything else?” he said, and he sighed so deeply that I worried our profiteroles might blow onto the floor.
“Not at present,” Graeme said, and then we were alone again. “Cheers!” my acquirer said, raising up his Grand Marnier. I scrambled for my cordial, touched glasses, and then watched him pour his into his coffee. I didn’t know if the custom was British or Graeme’s own, but my Baileys quickly met the same fate.
“So,” Graeme said, when I had tasted the extremely satisfactory result. “You’re a librarian who knows the Bard, and you help out friends in a bakery. What else should I know about you?”
What else? Well, I could tell him that I’d been raised by my grandmother because my own mother didn’t want anything to do with me after my fourth birthday. Hmm…not exactly an upbeat introduction. I could tell him about the last person I’d spoken to in London, my ex-fiancé who had broken my heart after twelve years of dating and the longest engagement known to man. Yeah, not a great conversation starter, either. I could fill him in on the I.B., and we could spend the rest of the evening coming up with more and more horrible meanings for the initials. Yeah. Right.
I needed something charming, something witty, something unique that would keep him here, chatting with me into the wee hours of the morning. I sipped my coffee, transferred a raspberry tart to my plate and said, “I’m a witch.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I couldn’t believe I’d said them. I mean, it wasn’t precisely a secret. David had never told me not to mention my powers. Nothing I’d read required me to take an oath of silence. If the Coven had rules, they’d never told me and, besides, I wasn’t a member of the Coven yet.
But I could count on two hands the people who knew that I had magical powers. David. Neko. Melissa. My mother and grandmother. My grandmother’s friend, Uncle George. The I.B.
There were likely others who suspected. My relatives in Connecticut had powers of their own to varying degrees, and they must have noticed the…odd…events surrounding the unmasking of the I.B.
But I had never told anyone before. I had never looked
anyone in the eye and said, “I am a witch.”
I waited for Graeme to laugh. I waited for him to look at his watch, to remember that he had somewhere else to be, to recall that he had promised to read the collected works of Dostoevsky to his Great-aunt Gertrude that night.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he set his fork down, and he said solemnly, “There are Wyrd Women in my family, going back generations.” Wyrd Women. Witches. “I don’t know many of the details, but my da told me stories when I was a boy. Told me about what his mum could do, when she was angry.”
“You believe me?” I was a little shocked.
He swallowed a bite of almond cake. “Why wouldn’t I? What possible reason would you have to lie?”
To make myself more interesting. Because I’m a delusional madwoman. Because I’m an ax murderer, waiting to bewitch you into my bed and then do away with you under the light of the full moon.
“None, really,” I said. My voice quirked on the second word, twisting into a semblance of a British accent, and I bit back a wince. I wasn’t consciously trying to imitate him, it just happened. I rushed out more words, so that he wouldn’t think I was mocking. “It’s just so strange the way all this has happened. I haven’t told anyone. It’s not that I’m ashamed or anything, it’s just that it’s so bizarre, I’m afraid people will think I’m lying. That I’m making it all up.”
“When you’ve seen as many odd things as I have in this world, you start believing more of what you’re told.”
“Odd things?”
“I’ll tell you,” he assured me. “But there’s plenty of time for that. You go first. I want to hear about how you became a witch.”
And so I told him. Just like that. I told him about how the Peabridge had been on the edge of bankruptcy and my salary had been slashed, but I’d been permitted to move into my cottage on the library grounds as a sort of substitute for a full paycheck. I told him about finding a secret stash of witchcraft books in the basement—volumes that had been hidden away by a Washington witch named Hannah Osgood, decades before. I told him about finding a statue of a cat and reading a spell and awakening my familiar, Neko, entirely by accident. And I told him about how I had used my newfound witchcraft the year before, how I had poured my magical strength into crystals to help my grandmother recover from a nasty case of pneumonia.
I even told him about my crazy mother and her abilities with runes, her New Age insanity that had brought her hurtling from the so-called Vortex in Sedona, back into my life, even though I’d believed for years that she had died in a car crash when I was a child. (There hadn’t been a car crash, I told him. Just a need to escape responsibility. I managed not to sound bitter when I said it. Or maybe that was the Baileys, coating the sounds of my words in my own ears.) I told him everything that I had learned about magic during the past ten months.
He was a wonderful listener. He asked enough questions to keep me going, enough to show that he was truly interested, but he never tried to change the topic of conversation. He never tried to steer me away from the odder bits of my story, the stranger aspects of my powers—crystals and runes and the specific spells that I had worked.
It felt wonderful to tell someone all of this, fantastic to share. I was grateful when Graeme caught the waiter’s attention, when he signaled that we’d both have more coffee. When we’d finished that brew, along with additional supporting liqueurs, I finally looked at my watch.
“One o’clock!” I said. “I had no idea it was so late!”
“The restaurant stays open till four.”
“I have to go, though! I have to work tomorrow. I mean, today!”
He smiled at my confusion, letting his grin grow into a laugh when I barely managed to fight off a yawn. “Yes, well. There is that.” He got the waiter’s attention and asked for the check before pulling out his money clip.
“But wait!” I said, pleasantly surprised again by that clip, by the very Britishness of it. “I never got to hear about the strange things you’ve seen.”
“They’ll keep. That is, if I may see you again?”
“Yes!” I could hardly believe that he thought he had to ask.
“Are you free Friday night?”
“Of course,” I said, scarcely wasting a heartbeat to think that I should not admit to being available on a Friday, to having no pressing social plans.
Then I remembered. I was busy on Friday. Teresa Alison Sidney. “Oh. No.” I hadn’t gone so far as to tell him about my meeting with the Coven, and now I was overcome with self-consciousness. “I’m sorry. I do have other plans. Plans that I can’t break.”
He shrugged easily. “I’m afraid I have one of those business trips I mentioned coming up. I leave on Saturday for England, and I’ll be gone for the entire week.” I must have looked as crestfallen as I felt, because he grinned and said, “But perhaps the Saturday following?”
“Won’t you have jet lag?”
“We seasoned travelers learn to cope.”
“I’d love to see you, then.”
“I’ll ring you up that morning, and we can make plans.”
And then he was helping me out of the booth. He was holding the door to the restaurant. He was stepping to the curb and raising a hand, summoning one of D.C.’s ubiquitous cabs. He was handing money to the driver, telling him to take me wherever I requested.
And then, just before he handed me into the car, he pulled me close. He tangled his fingers in my hair and set his lips on mine. His kiss was soft, gentle, tingling with potential. Before I could say anything, before I could respond, before I could rethink my need to be at work in a few short hours, he pulled away, helped me into the cab, closed the door and let me drive away.
I lay awake until dawn, watching my clock tick away seconds, minutes, hours—time that could have been spent much more pleasurably, if only I had responded faster to the promise of Graeme’s kiss.
6
David shrugged as he completed his survey from the top of my purposely messy chignon to the soles of my practical sandals. Somehow, it had been much easier to prepare for meeting the Coven than it had been to get ready for dessert with Graeme.
Women. I knew what to wear for them.
I had pulled on a lightweight knit dress—black of course. Body skimming, but not skintight. Appropriate undergarments to avoid, ahem, the dreaded VPL. I didn’t want to appear too severe, so I had accessorized with a necklace and earrings made out of fused glass. The jewelry reflected hints of lavender and crimson, with delicate sprays of emerald.
“Not too much?” I asked.
“I’m sure it’s fine.”
“You’re sure? What does that mean?”
He shrugged. “It means that I don’t spend a lot of time tracking women’s fashion.”
“Neko?” I wailed.
“Perfect, girlfriend.” My familiar pursed his lips into a saucy kiss. “Trust me.”
Trust him. Well, I did. At least in theory. But I still recognized the sparkling feeling in my fingertips as nervousness, and I reminded myself to take a few deep breaths. I turned back to plead with David. “Promise me that you’ll stay with me, the whole time that we’re there.”
“I promise that you’ll never be in danger.” I was going to point out that there was a real difference between what I’d asked and what he’d offered, but he didn’t give me a chance. “Okay,” David said, brushing his hands together. “Let’s go.”
I realized that I’d overlooked a crucial detail. “The car!” I should have borrowed Gran’s Lincoln Continental after work. I traveled by car so rarely that it had completely slipped my mind.
I glanced at my watch and swore to myself. Eleven o’clock. We’d really be pushing it, catching a cab and getting over to Gran’s apartment building. I had keys to her car, though, and we could get into the garage easily enough. I just wasn’t certain where Teresa Alison Sidney lived, how long it would take to get there. If the car failed to start (not that it ever had in the past),
or if the gas tank was empty (even though I’d filled it two weeks before and Gran never drove), or if the garage gates refused to open…
“Relax,” David said, producing a key ring from the interior pocket of his summer-weight suit. The silver fob was etched with an intricate torch.
“What’s that?”
“My key ring.”
“No.” My exasperation was only partially based on my blossoming panic. “That design.”
“Hecate’s Torch? Symbol of witches everywhere?”
I thought I’d seen it before. It must be printed in some of the books downstairs. I let myself focus on the single silver key that dangled from the device, heavy and reassuring with its black plastic head.
“My car is out front,” David said.
“Your car?” I was shocked. “How come I’ve never seen you drive a car before now?”
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth,”’ David said with a grin.
“If that’s supposed to make me feel calmer, I’m not sure it’s going to work.” After all, what did I need with quotations from Hamlet? From a play where the main character sees ghosts, goes mad, and litters the stage with bodies before the end of the last act? “Relax,” David said again. He spared an inquiring glance for Neko. “Ready?”
For answer, my familiar hefted the Illustrated History of Witches. I reached for it and said, “I’ll carry it.”
“It’s my job,” he said. “I serve you, remember?”
“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say it out loud.”
“You might want to mark today on your calendar, then. I’m not likely to repeat it, girlfriend.” He stuck out his tongue and scampered to the door. Neither man spoke further as I secured the cottage, even when I double-and triple-checked the lock. I stopped walking when I got to the end of the garden path, turning around to look back at my home, at the building that had gotten me into the middle of all this witchcraft business in the first place.
Was it worth it? At the moment, I wasn’t sure. I thought that I would choose a dozen first dates before I’d set myself up to meet a coven full of witches. Yeah, right. As if I had the choice to make.
