by Beverly Long
Yesterday's Magic
Beverly Long
* * *
Rating: ★★★★☆
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Romance, Time Travel, Western, Westerns, romance time travel old west western
Bella Fantini is a modern-day witch who must leave her magic behind when she time travels back to 1877 Kansas to prevent a curse from being placed on her family. Sheriff Jedidiah McNeil isn’t happy about the beautiful stranger who is wrecking havoc in his peaceful town. Will Bella succeed and save her family? Can Jedidiah convince her to give up her magic in exchange for love?
Yesterday’s Magic
By Beverly Long
Copyright 2012, Beverly Long
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and settings are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual names, events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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CHAPTER ONE
“Have you been twitching your nose again?”
Bella looked up from the cookbook that she’d reluctantly dug out of the cupboard ten minutes earlier. Her sister stood in the doorway between the small kitchen and the living room, her body slightly bent, fingers of one hand splayed flat against her abdomen.
“Shouldn’t you be lying down?” Bella asked.
Averil ignored the suggestion. Instead, she pointed at the small television stuffed between the toaster and the coffeepot. “After you left this morning, traffic reporters were at a loss to explain an unusual situation. All the cars on the Kennedy Expressway were crowded into the two right lanes with barely a vehicle in the far-left lane.”
Busted. Bella flipped a page of the cookbook. “Stuffed artichokes. Now that sounds delicious,” she said.
“Bella,” Averil warned.
“Oh, fine.” Bella stood up, grabbed the back of the kitchen chair that she’d been sitting in, and shoved it in her sister’s direction. Averil’s normally bright complexion was pale, and her short, blonde hair, which she could style with a few flicks of her fingers and look like a million bucks, lay flat on her head.
Bella hoisted herself up onto the kitchen counter. If she’d been born with hair like her sister, she’d never have to worry about being late again. But no. While her sister had gotten her blonde hair and blue eyes from their mother, Bella had gotten their father’s thick, naturally wavy, dark-brown hair and his almost-black eyes. Without a hair dryer, good straightening products, and twenty minutes, she was doomed.
“I had an appointment,” Bella explained. “Besides, it was just a smidgen, a very teensy bit of magic. I got up, dressed, and drove my car—just like a regular person. I just needed to make sure that I wouldn’t be late.”
“Who was the appointment with?”
Bella wiggled her fingers and her bare toes. “With Rafael. Honestly, the man holds a grudge for months if you mess up his schedule. But nobody does a pedicure like him. Don’t you love the color? Red is always so perfect for the holidays.” She smiled at her sister.
Averil didn’t smile back. Her blue eyes were troubled.
“I know,” Bella added, “that I promised I could go a month. If only I hadn’t overslept.”
Averil waved the arm that wasn’t otherwise occupied, still ignoring the chair that Bella had sent her direction. “Face it. You can’t give up the magic. And perhaps, if I were better at it, I’d do the same. Right now, however, we’ve got bigger troubles to worry about.”
Bella tried to hide her smile as she glanced at the still-open cookbook on the table. She didn’t especially want trouble, didn’t generally go around looking for it, but she was smart enough to know what it meant.
She wasn’t going to have to cook tonight.
“What’s up?” she asked, reaching for the telephone. Sammy’s Pasta delivered for free. She could already taste the Alfredo sauce.
“Father’s acting odd,” Averil said.
Victor Stanley Fantini was a witch. Strange was part of the job description. Bella started to dial.
Averil crossed the kitchen and, with the flick of her index finger, efficiently cut the connection. “This is serious. He’s asking for a Convening.”
Oh, my. They hadn’t had one of those for almost ten years. It had been right after their mother’s funeral. Bella reached for her glass of wine. “When?”
“Tonight.”
As if on cue, the doorbell rang. Bella looked at her sister. “We could always pretend we’re out,” she whispered.
Averil sighed. “Has a locked door ever stopped him before?”
Bella slid off the counter, walked past her sister, and crossed the living room. When she got to the door, she used the peephole to make sure it was her father.
He winked at her. Like he always did.
There was no need for worry.
But even as she told herself that, she knew she was wrong. His aura was gray and black. Where were the blue and the green with the sparkling rays of white that he normally carried so effortlessly?
Scared, she turned to tell Averil—her sister had never had the gift of colors, had never been able to see beyond the physical body of a person. But one look at her sister’s face stopped her. Averil was plenty scared already.
Bella grabbed the door handle. Whatever was wrong, she’d fix it and they’d put this nonsense to rest.
She kissed her father on both cheeks. “Daddy, so good of you to drop by.”
She waited for his customary response. Only a fool turns his back on beauty. Or, perhaps, I needed some sunshine and I thought of you. He had a thousand lines, all with a similar theme. Victor Stanley Fantini adored his daughters. He’d felt the same about his mortal wife.
But tonight, all Bella got was a quick peck on the right cheek as her father brushed past her. “I’m glad you’re both here,” he said.
Averil had moved from the doorway into the living room. Bella went and stood next to her. “What’s wrong, Daddy?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he motioned for them to sit. Averil walked like an old woman over to the tan leather couch and carefully lowered herself down. Bella waited until her sister got situated and then took the other end. Her father sat in the green and tan chair across from them, ignoring the matching ottoman. Instead, he leaned forward and reached an arm out to each of them. “There’s no time to waste,” he said.
Averil reached for her father’s hand and then extended her other arm in Bella’s direction. Bella closed her eyes. “Can’t we just have some wine and talk about this?” she whispered.
“Isabella,” her father said, in a tone that she’d heard very few times in her life but often enough to know that it meant it was time to stop screwing around. “Now.”
She opened her eyes and reached out both arms—one to her sister and the other to her father. Her sister’s skin was cool and soft, her father’s warm and rougher, and the contrast pulled at her, making her feel like she wasn’t whole but rather two halves, plastered together, affixed yet still at risk for splitting.
“It was 1877 and I was a young man,” her father said. “Like it sometimes happens with young people, there was a frustration in my soul. Perhaps it was spurred by the mindless and never-ceasing carousing of my peers. Perhaps it was because even though
I was surrounded day and night by friends, I was alone. Perhaps it was because I had not yet found your mother and as such, I was incomplete.”
Like always, when her father spoke of his wife of twenty years, his tone was tender. Bella squeezed her father’s hand. “Go on, Daddy.”
“I decided that if I was a man, I needed to do a man’s work. I had a fair hand with a horse so I joined up with a group that was herding Texas Longhorns to the beef-hungry north.”
“You herded cattle?” Bella asked. She’d rarely seen her father not wearing a suit.
Averil frowned at her. “Driving cattle up from the southwest was big business. Weren’t you a history major in college?”
Yes, but she minored in parties and the two areas of study had many times been at cross-purposes. She’d managed to graduate. Just barely. She’d gotten a job, too. A bunch of them, actually. Her current job of creating display windows for InTouch Department Stores was the ninth or tenth—it was hard to keep count—position since she’d graduated three years before.
“It was hard work,” her father explained, “but I didn’t mind it. Anyway, our destination was Dodge City, Kansas. We spent nearly six months on the trail and arrived just as the early winter storms were setting in.” He paused.
“I’d proven myself, I should have stopped when I was ahead. But a man there asked us if we’d be willing to drive fifty head to his cousin’s place in Mantosa, Kansas. It was 300 miles, all the way to the far northeastern part of the state, near the Missouri river.
“Another fellow and I agreed and we set off. It was a risk. There was a law against taking cows into that part of the state because ranchers were afraid of Texas Fever. That was a disease caused by ticks and carried by Longhorns and could wipe out a herd of healthy cattle in no time. But our cows were healthy so I didn’t see the harm.”
Her father looked a little embarrassed. “You did say you were restless,” Bella said. If anyone understood that, she did.
“Anyway, it took almost a month and the weather was getting worse all the time. We made camp just outside Mantosa and I went into town to look for the cousin so that we could hand off the stock and be on our way. I met up with him and we transacted our business.
“I should have returned to camp, but I had a pocket full of money and an ego full of pride. I made the unfortunate mistake of going to Hawkin’s Saloon for a whiskey. The first one warmed me up and the second made me itch for a game of cards. There was a seat left at one of the tables. I didn’t realize then what everybody else obviously knew. And once I’d sorted it out, my third whiskey made it seem impossible to walk away.”
Third whiskey. Bella had never seen her father drink anything stronger than lemonade.
“A young woman was serving the drinks. Her name was Delilah. Such a pretty name. She was just a little thing with long red hair and a sweet laugh. A man at the table took an interest in her and I had a fairly certain idea of how he intended for the evening to end. Sure enough, when she finished her shift and walked upstairs, he put his cards on the table.”
Her father looked up, his cheeks pink with embarrassment. Both she and Averil nodded, letting him know there was no need for details. It made no difference that she was twenty-five and Averil, twenty-seven. Their father would always think of them as little girls.
“It was the strangest thing. From what I’d gathered, this man, like me, was new to town. He’d either arrived with a reputation or he’d built one quickly because everybody just pushed back their chairs, as if they couldn’t get home fast enough. Even the bartender threw his apron on the counter and turned down the lanterns. I followed the rest of them out the door.”
Bella looked at Averil and knew that she too had heard the self-condemnation in their father’s voice. What the heck had happened? Her heart sped up in her chest.
“But there’d been something in that man’s eyes,” her father said, his tone flat. “So I went up the back stairs. I was twenty feet from the door when I heard her screaming.”
Bella closed her eyes, took three very deep breaths, and suddenly, she could see it. The young woman on her back, her long dress pushed up around her waist, her arms above her head, with her hands tied to the iron bedposts.
There was blood all over the pillow, all over her face. The man had broken her nose, practically smashed it flat. And now he was holding her with one hand and yanking at his trousers with the other.
“Oh, Daddy,” she heard Averil say and knew her sister had seen it as well.
Her father stood up, breaking their linked hands. The vision faded and Bella knew it was because their father wanted to protect them. “I broke the door down and when I saw that poor woman, I went crazy. I wanted to kill him.”
“Oh, Daddy,” Averil said again.
“I didn’t. I decided that was a matter for the law in that town. But I had to do something. And since I badly wanted to hurt him, I threw him up against the wall on the opposite side of the room.”
“Without actually touching him,” Bella said knowingly. She and her father were sometimes very much alike.
“I didn’t trust myself to touch him. But doing it that way did get his attention. Neither one of us saw the young woman reach under her bed and pull out a gun. She shot him. And he died, bled out like the animal he was. But not before he cursed me and mine for generations to come.”
“Just you?” Averil asked. “Not the woman?”
“Just me,” her father said, his voice soft. “He knew what I was.”
Bella stood up but then sat back down fast. She felt weak, drained, like always after she’d slipped away. “No way. No one could figure it out that quickly. You weren’t cursed. We aren’t cursed.” She looked at her sister for confirmation. “You know it, Averil,” she demanded. “For witches, we’re amazingly normal.”
Her father shook his head. “His name was Rantaan Toomay. And he saw in me what I should have seen in him. We both had the magic. Except he was Bad Magic.”
She heard Averil’s quick intake of breath and knew her sister was afraid to ask. “How do you know that?” Bella demanded.
“Because what he said would happen—has.” Her father swallowed, so deliberately that she could see the movement of his throat. “He said, ‘Go, fool that you are, but know that thirteen decades from today, when you are least prepared but have the most to lose, the earth shall split open and the waters shall swell over their banks. You and yours will be spared, only to pay a debt more dear. At the next full moon, you will be mine, to do with as I please, and you and yours will forever beg for mercy.’”
Bella drained her wine and set the glass down on the table with a sharp crack. “Well, that’s garbage,” she said.
Her father shook his head. “It was on Dec fifth, 1877, exactly one hundred and thirty years ago today, that I killed him.”
Bella got up from the couch and circled the room three times before looking at her father and sister again. Her mind was racing. “So what?” she asked. “It’s a hundred and thirty years ago, today. That means nothing. We’re freaking out for nothing.”
Averil got up from her spot on the couch and stood behind her father. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Bella, I couldn’t do much today besides watch CNN. Just before noon, there was an earthquake on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The epicenter was straight east of South Carolina, about six miles out. There were wave surges over fifty-feet high and most everything on the Outer Banks is now under water.”
The Outer Banks. The three of them had been vacationing in South Carolina up until five days ago. Her father had suggested the trip to cheer her up because she and Bradley Willis, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, were really truly off.
Three days into the trip, Averil hadn’t felt well. They’d cut their two week vacation short and returned to Chicago.
Bella couldn’t move. She could barely think. The earth shall split and the waters shall swell over their banks. Thirteen decades from today. Bad Magic. She looked at her sister. A
veril’s face looked pinched, like it had right before they’d removed her appendix.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Bella said. “Good Magic and Bad Magic are so evenly matched. He would have had to summon all his power to curse you. He would have had nothing left to heal himself. He chose to die?”
“I can’t explain it, Bella,” her father said.
“Well, we’ve got to fight back,” Bella said, surprised at how calm she sounded given that her heart was racing in her chest. She walked into the kitchen and looked at the calendar that hung on the wall. “The next full moon is in seven days.”
Her father stood up and waved his hands wildly. “You know how Bad Magic works. Once the curse is made, it can’t be reversed.”
Bella moved in front of her father and put her hands on his shoulders. “Fine. Then we figure out a way to make sure the curse never gets made.”
She heard Averil’s sharp gasp, like she couldn’t get enough air. But Bella ignored her sister.
“We make sure that Toomay never goes up those steps. That he plays cards and goes home. Then there’s no reason for you to go after him, no reason for the saloon girl to shoot him.”
Her father shook his head. “You can’t be suggesting . . .”
Bella looked at her sister. Her father would listen to Averil. She wasn’t just the oldest, she was the wisest, the most stable. “You know I’m right, Averil,” Bella said. “One of us has to go back in time and change things. It’s the only way.”
Averil patted the chair where her father had been sitting. “Daddy, sit down,” she said gently. Once he did, she squatted next to him. “You know you can’t go back.”
Bella knew that’s why his colors were gray and black. He wanted more than anything to go back and fix what had happened, but the Bad Magic was too powerful. There were rules about these kinds of things. The curse had been laid at his feet. He could travel back but only to a time after the curse had been uttered.
