“I get it. You’re the white hats. So what do the black hats want?”
“World domination, pretty much.” He saw her look. “I know, I know. Sounds like a summer blockbuster. Arch villains. But they’ve got a weather girl who’s been creating all these monster storms in the last couple of years. They’ve been tinkering with financial markets. They were behind the Great Recession. And that’s only the beginning.” He couldn’t believe himself. He was an unlikely candidate to be a commercial for Family Tremaine. He sounded like he was about to don a superhero suit and ride to the rescue. It’s not like he wanted to join his family’s doomed fight. But he might as well lay the last of it on her. “There are these Talisman things. They represent the four suits of the tarot, which as it happens, was invented by Merlin to help ordinary people think about their lives and predict things. The four Talismans are a Cup, a Sword, a Wand and a Pentacle, whatever that is. He made them to amplify the magic in our genes. They were lost too, of course, but we’ve been trying to find them before the Clan does.”
She nodded like she was listening to a crazy person. “And how you doing with that?”
He looked away. “Not good. They’ve got three. Every time we find one, they take it away. That’s how Senior got hurt last year. Morgan blasted him with the Wand when we were, uh, liberating the Cup from a museum, and Mother couldn’t heal him.”
Greta frowned. She was probably disgusted. If she didn’t think the whole thing was a pack of lies. But she surprised him by saying, “That must be hard for the family. I think he’s a good man. And if he was so skilled at everything and the leader of a big corporation…well, it must be hard to see him struggling.”
Lanyon surprised himself. “Yeah. It is.”
She examined him shrewdly. “He knows. He blames himself for driving you away.”
“He told you that?”
She got a little smile around the corners of her mouth. “Yeah. But I told him he was full of it. You were a bad boy all on your own.”
Wow. She had been having a hell of a conversation with Senior. Lan didn’t even know Senior was capable of that kind of interaction. Guilt washed over him. He really didn’t know much about how his father was getting along at all. He knew he’d been causing his family anxiety, but the impact of his callous behavior hadn’t come home to him until now. He looked down at his bare feet. “Not exactly a shining example of a son.”
“You’re talking to the ultimate example of an ungrateful daughter. Guess I won’t be calling any kettles black.”
He looked up at her. Kee would paint her as an angel right about now. A channel of sunlight leaked through the heavy drapes and set her hair to gleaming gold. Raw deal for her. So he had to let her call the shots.
“I know you don’t even know me. I know this all sucks. All we can do at this point is try to pick up the pieces.”
“No way to undo this genetic thing?” Her voice had grown distant.
He shrugged apologetically. “Not when it’s in your DNA.” Time to make light of a fucked situation, before she started contemplating suicide. “My personal plan was to drink myself into oblivion. Maybe not the best option for you, though.”
She moved out of the channel of light and into the semi-darkness of the room. She didn’t say anything for a while, just stared at the rumpled bed. Lan didn’t dare push her. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to happen right now. He knew he wanted his life to be different. No genetic destiny. No magic powers. He wanted Senior to be the way he was before the attack. He wanted to be the happy-go-lucky prankster he’d once been. He wished the Clan in hell or worse, if there was anything worse. He actually wished he’d met Greta Falk as just a guy would meet a beautiful woman, wanting to get to know her, feeling a normal amount of attraction for her…
“I need to think about this,” Greta said, finally. Her voice was thoughtful. “It’s too much to take in right now, and anything I decide would probably turn out to be wrong.”
“Should I…should I go for a while, until you figure it out?”
She turned on him. “Right. So I can spend a few days puking my guts out? You are going nowhere, Lanyon Tremaine, until we figure out what to do about this.”
Okaaaaay.
Nothing was decided. But he felt strangely relieved.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‡
Greta had barely managed to keep out of Lanyon’s bed by escaping his room while he was in the shower. But she wasn’t sure she was ready to face the family who knew what she and Lanyon had been doing, and had ‘ideas’ about them. Like they were some genetic match or something. The story Lan had spun about genetic attraction and magic wanting to come together, and arch villains who would want to kill her, all suddenly seemed so wild she couldn’t believe she’d even entertained it for a second.
But she could feel he was in the shower right now, though she was moving cautiously into the kitchen. Of course she could smell someone cooking onions in olive oil ahead. But that scent was joined by furniture polish from the living room and the peculiar scent of marigolds just visible in a vase in the TV room beyond, and was that the smell of fireplace ash? Not normal. And Brina had healed her bruises. She couldn’t deny that.
She shook her head as if to clear it. So what if she’d looked out at the stars and felt…right with herself after having body-tingling sex with Lan. She always felt good under the stars. Maybe not that good, but fainting did not a magic power make. Maybe she’d be some kick-ass astronomer someday or something.
Actually, that didn’t sound half bad.
She peeked into the kitchen, wary. The family seemed to gather there a lot. But it was just Jane and Kee, working to prepare dinner. Jane wore sensible chinos and a pretty flowered blouse under an apron that said, ‘Too many cooks means you.’ Kee wore a wild abstract print dress with a big, flouncy skirt and red-patent flats.
“Hi, Greta,” Kee said. A little too brightly, Greta thought. “Come in and sit down.” Kee gestured to the bar that separated the kitchen from the little dining area.
“Want a glass of wine?” Jane asked over her shoulder. She stood at the stove. “You look like you could use some.”
“Uh, yeah, if it isn’t too much trouble.” Greta slid onto a bar stool, one of four.
“Not at all.” Kee moved to one of two giant refrigerators. “I was just going to pour myself one.”
They seemed so…normal.
“Where is everybody?” Greta asked. Not that she wanted to confront more Tremaines.
“Tammy’s down at the stable,” Jane said. “Brina and Brian are upstairs. He takes a nap in the afternoon. Everybody else is over in the office wing, working.”
“What are they working on?”
“They’re looking for an antique relic called a Talisman,” Jane said, as if that wasn’t crazy.
Yeah, Greta thought. The things that had come down from Merlin. Riiiiight. They were missing the fourth one.
Kee set down a delicate wine glass and poured a healthy draft of white wine. “It’s just us chickens, as Mom says. And you can tell all.”
Greta felt the immediate blush rise to her cheeks. And her neck and her forehead.
“Kee,” Jane admonished. “Don’t embarrass Greta.” She gave a sly smile, which looked out of place on such a sweet face. “Besides, we know already, don’t we?”
“Well, we know they had great, screaming sex,” Kee said philosophically. “That’s part of the deal. But what power did you get?”
They really believed this stuff. Greta was somehow shocked, as though she had expected that Lan’s explanation would evaporate outside the confines of his bedroom.
“I don’t know,” she said, shifting her gaze to the wine glass. She took a convulsive glug. She had to get hold of herself. Sands seemed to be shifting under her feet. “What am I saying? I did not get some magic power because there is no such thing.”
“Too soon,” Jane said. “It will come.”
Greta stared at them. Kee went
back to slicing eggplant. Were they making Parmigiano? Probably. So…unremarkable. “You all believe this, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Kee said, looking up in surprise.
“I know it’s hard,” Jane said. “I grew up around it, so it was easier. Drew and I have been friends since we were ten. I’ve known about the family DNA for almost that long.”
“Frankly, I wasn’t sure Lan would have the courage to tell you,” Kee said. “I thought he’d chicken out and make Jane do it.”
Greta gulped more wine. “It’s just so hard to believe…”
“Want a demonstration?” Kee asked enthusiastically. She caught sight of Jane, who obviously didn’t approve. “Don’t be a spoil sport, Jane.”
Jane waved a spoon thick with tomato sauce. “Just leave the kitchen alone, would you? I’m on a schedule.”
“Done.” Kee turned to Greta. “I’ll leave the bar alone, too. But just hold on to the edge there. It’s kind of disorienting.” She took a big breath. “Wait.” She let out the breath. “Pick a painter.”
“Uh…Van Gogh?”
“Okay. I’ll do The Starry Night. You know that one, don’t you?” Greta nodded. “Good. I want you to recognize the setting. No fainting or anything.” That was encouraging. Kee took another breath, let it out, and her face went…calm. Greta might not have seen a face so serene except in paintings of the Madonna.
Suddenly the room around her seemed to boil. Colors whirled. Greta was glad she was holding on to the bar. The terrace and the lawns outside the French doors disappeared. So did the windows themselves. She was on a hill. The afternoon sun was gone. A village lay below her. Next to her, a cedar tree pointed to the sky like a waving, black finger. The sky itself had turned to indigo with blue waves and swirling comets in bright yellow. It wasn’t something she was looking at—it was something she was inside. The world was streaked and pulsing with color. If it hadn’t been for the bar under her hands and the kitchen in which Jane moved so prosaically right next to the nightmare world, she would have been totally disoriented. What was she saying? She was totally disoriented. Half of existence had been replaced by a Van Gogh painting.
The room snapped back to normal.
Greta was left gasping. “My God!”
“That’s what I got,” Kee said, back to slicing eggplant. “Used it against the Clan a couple times. Jackson Pollack and M.C. Escher are especially effective.”
“That’s a p-power?” Greta was shaking.
“Take another sip of your wine, dear,” Jane advised.
“Jane, show her yours,” Kee ordered.
“I’m busy.”
“Jane,” Kee said seriously. “She needs to believe it.”
“Oh, all right.” Jane rubbed her hands on her apron. “Now, I don’t want to shock you. Unlike some I could name.” Here she gave Kee a pointed look. “So, it’s going to get dark for a minute. Kind of more than dark.”
“Black-hole dark,” Kee elaborated. “But very cool.”
“Are you ready?” Jane asked.
Greta nodded, too stunned to do anything else.
Jane took a breath and got the same beatific look that Kee had just before she’d done…whatever she did. And the world went black—not the kind of black that you got in your bedroom at night, because Greta realized now that wasn’t really black at all. This wasn’t the black of a power outage, because you’d still have the ambient light of stars. This was total, isolating, no-light-has-ever-been kind of black.
She was just about to scream when the darkness vanished as though it had never been.
“I’m getting better at that,” Jane remarked as she turned back to her stove. “Used to be I’d douse the whole peninsula. I got just this room that time.” She smiled at Greta over her shoulder. “Didn’t even interfere with Kemble’s work in the office wing.”
“Oh, my, God,” Greta whispered.
“I know, right?” Kee said. “It must be pretty overwhelming if you aren’t used to it.”
“It’s all true,” Greta breathed.
“Yep.” Kee got out some sheet pans and started spreading out her eggplant slices.
“This is…awful.” That meant the Clan existed—and the danger. There really were arch villains in the world. What in the hell had she gotten herself into?
She only realized Jane had come to stand on the other side of the bar when Jane said, “Not all of it, Greta.”
Jane’s voice was so calm, so steady. It was like an anchor for Greta’s wild thoughts. Greta looked at her, certain all her worry and her pain was showing in her face.
“There’s the true love part,” Jane said, smiling. That smile came from somewhere deeply contented in Jane’s soul.
“True love?” Greta asked.
Kee stomped over to stand beside Jane. “You mean my oaf of a brother didn’t tell you about the true love?”
“He said we were meant for each other, genetically,” Greta said, uncertain. “And being parted would make us sick for a while.”
“Men.” Kee threw up her hands. “They just can’t use the L-word, can they? It’s more than that. He is your one, true, forever love, and you are his. That’s just how it works.”
“He said we were…partners.”
“Oh dear,” Jane said. “That makes it sound rather like a business relationship.”
“But you did get the bark-like-a-dog sex,” Kee smirked. “That’s another good part.”
“Kee!” Jane admonished. Greta felt herself go beet red.
“Lanyon knows that you are his destined love,” Jane assured her.
“He offered to leave.” Greta protested. “And by the way, I don’t even know him.” Had that come out like a wail?
“I know,” Jane said. “The way it’s happened to you is most unfortunate. And it’s never easy. He offered to leave because he’s as confused as you are. And he doesn’t like the idea of Destiny. It sounds so much like you have no choice.”
“Do I have a choice?”
Kee and Jane exchanged glances. It was Jane who took the assignment of responding. Greta was getting the feeling that difficult assignments always fell to Jane. “Yes. And no.” She sighed. “You can’t choose what happens to you, only how you respond to it, just like the rest of life. You two can part. The feelings will go away. Your power, whatever it is, will stay. But you won’t feel whole, I don’t think, ever in your life. It’s a heavy price to pay.”
“And Lan said the Clan would try to kill me, that I’d have to stay here, with you, give up my career, not that I’m sure I want to even be an actress, but still—to have no choice in the matter…”
Jane took one of her hands across the bar. Kee seemed to brighten at her confused speech. “The key is to take the matter in small bites,” Jane said. “It’s just too overwhelming to decide now, and you don’t have all the pieces yet.”
That was alarming. “What pieces?” With everything she’d heard so far, what worse could there be?
“You don’t know Lanyon,” Jane said quietly. She must have felt Greta stiffen. “I won’t tell you about him. That wouldn’t weigh with you. But you ought to know what you’re giving up before you decide to pay the price and leave him. He’s a good man, and you ought to get to know him. That way, when you choose, you’ll do it from a position of strength. You’re a strong person. I can tell. You’ll choose what’s right for you.”
“And we’ll stand by you, no matter what you choose,” Kee assured her. “You get the family too, though you don’t know us either. But if you want my dickhead brother to leave, I’ll personally kick him out for you.”
That was so reassuring.
“Now,” Jane continued, prosaically. “Do you think you could grate a pile of cheese while you’re getting used to the fact that you have a Destiny?”
*
Lan had felt Greta out in the kitchen for some time now. The pull between them was palpable. And it was growing. The urge to run out there and stand next to her, touch the small of her
back, coax her back to the bedroom…it was almost overwhelming.
Shit. This was impossible. He had to get some distance, even if he didn’t leave entirely. Maybe he’d go over to the house Senior had built for Drew and Michael for a while.
He pulled on clean jeans and grabbed a denim shirt. He was about to leave when he realized he didn’t have any shoes on. Cursing, he pulled open the dresser drawer, flinging balled pairs of socks everywhere until he found some boot socks. He shoved his feet into his boots. But he couldn’t just run for the door. He was missing something. It was almost as if he was still naked. He stared around room. Was he losing it? His glance fell on the flute, leaning in the corner by the desk. Jane had put it back in his room after the birthday fiasco. He felt the tension unlock inside him, dissipate. Yeah. He needed music with him at all times, it seemed. He grabbed the flute. It felt so right in his hand. He’d just take the flute.
Pushing out in the hallway, he stopped. He couldn’t go out the front. They might see him from the kitchen. He wanted no more interrogation or advice today. He headed to the glass door down at the end of the Bay of Pigs, flung it open and turned right, away from the terrace and out to the driveway. He was practically running. He started across the circular drive.
“Shon?”
Lan stopped as though he’d run into a glass wall. He took a breath. Why in hell did that voice still have the power to stop him in his tracks? He stood there, shaking.
“A w-word?”
Lan turned slowly. His father was sitting in the small knot garden on the north side of the drive under a jacaranda tree. Lan was so not ready to have a conversation with Senior. “I gotta go,” he choked.
His father didn’t get up, of course. Instead, he said, “N-never figured you for g-gutlessh.”
Oh, that was priceless. So his father wanted to have a ‘talk’. Well, great. “Gutless?” He strode over to where Senior was seated on a wooden bench with a scrolled back. “I’m the only one with guts enough to tell you to go to hell with this Destiny crap.” His flute was almost like a club in his hand.
His father’s smile was lop-sided these days, but still plenty annoying. “Ish that what you’re d-doing?”
The Magic's in the Music (Magic Series Book 5) Page 18
