A Magical Match

by Juliet Blackwell

  “It might have been a doppelgänger,” I said, though I still wasn’t convinced.

  “A doppelgänger?” Now Renee laughed fully. “You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?”

  “It’s the truth,” I said. “Or . . . maybe not a doppelgänger per se, but some sort of look-alike.”

  Renee laughed again, and I had to quell the urge to vault across the counter and punch her in the nose.

  “Then what do you think happened?” I asked.

  “I think you sent your boyfriend to take out dear Tristan Dupree, for fear that he’d come to work with me. Very clever of you to pick up on it so quickly, I have to say.”

  “Except it wasn’t Sailor. Oh, and thanks for spiking the cupcakes.”

  “What cupcakes?”

  “The ones you sent over with Jamie.”

  “Why would I do that?” Still smiling, Renee shook her head. “My, my, my, your man kills my man, and I barely even hold a grudge. And now you accuse me of, what? Trying to poison you with cupcakes?”

  I didn’t want her to know that she had succeeded in affecting my familiar. But still, she got my goat.

  I could feel Aidan’s hand on my arm, though I couldn’t tell whom he was trying to restrain—me, or himself.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Renee,” I said. “Selena is a child, and she’s under my protection. And I’ll die before I’ll let you get to her.”

  “That’s just fine, dear,” Renee said, holding out a cupcake frosted with black icing. “Here, I made this one just for you.”

  I swatted it away, and the cupcake landed with a splat on the tile floor, icing side down.

  Renee made another angry-toddler face. But her eyes seemed as ancient as the world itself as her gaze held mine. She gave me a slow smile.

  “You’d best take your witch out of here, Aidan, before you both get more than you’re asking for.”

  “Renee, we’re a united front, and we aren’t alone,” Aidan said, his voice steady and calm. “We have many behind us. You don’t stand a chance. Unless you want to leave town altogether, you’ll drop this challenge. We can all learn to live together.”

  “That’s a lovely speech, Aidan,” said Renee. “Just as pretty and false as that glamour you insist upon hiding behind. Are you sure you don’t want a dozen cupcakes for the road? My treat.”

  “No, thank you,” I said. “We don’t want anything from you.”

  We left Renee’s bakery without another word. Each lost in our own thoughts, Aidan and I rounded the corner without speaking, heading toward the car.

  I heard a rustling, and a man jumped out of the bushes.

  Chapter 20

  Aidan and I both blasted him with a wall of power. He was thrown back and landed on his butt in a large planter full of geraniums.

  “Jeez, you two!” Jamie exclaimed, hands held up in surrender. “Lay off, already.”

  “Oh, Jamie, I’m sorry!” I said.

  Aidan held out a hand and helped him to his feet.

  “I gotta say,” Jamie said, brushing leaves and dirt from his backside. “A guy tries to do the right thing, reach out, and he gets nothin’ but rejection. This is how people become recluses, you know—they can’t deal with people no more.”

  “We apologize,” I said, elbowing Aidan, who remained silent but nodded ever so slightly. “You caught us off guard.”

  “All evidence to the contrary.”

  “We just left Renee, so we’re a bit jumpy.”

  “She tell you anything?”

  “Not much,” I said. “She made some vague threats, as usual. Hey, did you come by my shop?”

  He gave me a side-eyed look. “Is this a trick question? ’Course I did. I brought a dozen cupcakes over this morning—you forget already?”

  “Actually, I meant yesterday morning. Did you happen to overhear me speaking to a man in front of Aunt Cora’s Closet . . . ?”

  Jamie shook his head.

  “You weren’t on Haight Street yesterday?”

  “I like that Amoeba Records they got there on Haight Street. I like vintage LPs. Sound’s much better than the modern CDs, in my opinion. I gotta get your permission to go record shopping, now?”

  “No, of course not. I was just wondering. Do you know a woman named Amy? Or Wind Spirit?”

  “No.” He shook his head and looked around as though worried about being watched. “And I gotta tell you: I stopped you for my own reasons, not to get interrogated.”

  “What is it you want?” I asked.

  “I’m thinkin’ this ‘cold’ you got is a little suspicious.”

  “How so?”

  “I work for Renee and all, but it’s not like I wanna be there.” He crooked his head in Aidan’s direction. “He knows what I’m sayin’. Right, pal? Sometimes that’s how it works. You don’t wanna be workin’ for someone, but you get stuck. There I was, runnin’ a nice little racket with the Russian psychics out in the Richmond District, and next thing I know, I’m indebted to the Cupcake Queen over here.”

  “What did you mean about Lily’s cold being suspicious?” Aidan asked.

  “Well, now, hold on for just a second here,” Jamie said. “What’s in it for me?”

  “You expect to be paid for information?” Aidan asked.

  “No, nothin’ like that. But I don’t wanna work for Renee no more. I want to throw in with you. Maybe I tell you some helpful things, and I come work for you instead? Whaddaya say?”

  There was a long pause. A car honked, and a couple of teenagers walked by.

  “You were just saying you needed to do some hiring, Aidan,” I said, amusing myself at Aidan’s expense.

  “It’s a possibility,” said Aidan. “Depending on the information. Renee holds your marker?”

  He nodded. “Even talking to you is dangerous for me, I gotta say.” He looked over his shoulder again.

  “Then don’t waste any more time.”

  “I’m sayin’, are you prone to colds? ’Cuz Renee was workin’ on a batter the other day, and I saw her put fingernails, hair, chopped-up feathers, and powdered crab shell in it. Lord only knows what else went in there.”

  “And that means what?” I asked.

  “I figured you’d know. Aren’t you the botanical whiz?”

  “I’m good at brewing, but I don’t have encyclopedic knowledge.” But I knew who did: Graciela. Or Calypso, maybe.

  “And then she did that mumbling thing that weirds me out. Anyway, she didn’t exactly come out and say what she was doing. She just said the batch she was makin’ was for a ‘special’ customer. I’m wonderin’ if she sent them to you.”

  “Wait. Were these the cupcakes you delivered this morning?” But that wouldn’t make sense—not only had I not eaten any of those cupcakes, but I’d started sneezing and feeling draggy a couple of days earlier.

  “Nah, the ones this morning had pot in them. She sells ’em down at the dispensary. She thought it was hysterical to send some over to your shop. Couldn’t stop laughing. It’s her brand of humor, which I don’t entirely get, if you know what I mean.”

  “So when did she send me cupcakes before then?”

  “Wasn’t cupcakes, I don’t think. More like her new line of meat pasties.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Ugh,” I said, putting my head in my hands as we left Jamie and approached the car. “I can’t believe I might have eaten something dosed by Renee! And fingernails and hair . . . I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Aidan smiled as he opened the car door for me. “You’re being just a tiny bit overdramatic. Don’t you know we all eat insects and larvae in our food, all the time? It might be unpleasant to think about, but it won’t hurt you.”

  “But I think she gave me this supposed ‘cold.’ Maybe you should put th
at green crystal on my nose and see if I’ve been poisoned?”

  “That only works if you’ve got goblin blood. I assume that’s not the case.”

  “I don’t know,” I said as Aidan got into the car. “The way things are unfolding, maybe that’s what the shoe box was trying to tell me about my past. Maybe that’s the prophecy. Maybe I’m not a witch at all, but something evil and unnatural.”

  Aidan looked at me so long without speaking that I looked up to meet his gaze.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You’re not evil and unnatural, Lily. You’re . . . extraordinary.”

  “Um, thank you.” I really didn’t know how to respond to that. “I thought you were angry with me.”

  “You’re the one who stormed out of my office last time. I didn’t ask you to leave. Have you ever noticed that when you get angry with me, you assume I’m angry with you?”

  “Okay . . . that’s a thought that’s going to fester.”

  “It’s all right to be angry with someone,” Aidan continued. “And with a friend, it’s a sign that we need to talk, obviously. Anyway, to get back to the pertinent question: How would you have eaten something from Renee’s shop?”

  “It was purely by accident.”

  “What happened?”

  “Renee went by Lucille’s Loft with some goodies, and Maya brought me one of the meat pasties.”

  “Was it good?”

  “Very.”

  The truth was, I wasn’t that careful about the food I consumed. I sort of assumed I’d feel anything that had been tampered with, and of course I avoided Renee’s cupcakes, but hadn’t I been thinking recently about all the enemies I’d made in town? Maybe I needed a taster. Like the European royals of old. I always wondered what that must have been like: to eat for a living, with the expectation that one might die at any meal.

  “You know, you could simply have a regular cold. You’re not immortal, after all.”

  “True. Could I borrow your phone?”

  I called Calypso to ask her about the odd ingredients Jamie had mentioned Renee had used in the pastry batter.

  “I don’t recognize the ingredients right offhand, Lily. I’m sorry.” I could hear her flipping through pages. “Of course, fingernails are never good.”

  That was for dang sure.

  “But, let’s see. . . . You say it’s associated with coldlike symptoms?”

  “Yes. Sneezing, congestion, loss of smell and lack of energy mostly.”

  “Okay, yes, here it is. It sounds like it might be a Tiberius Caesar befuddling spell. It says here, ‘Sneezing was considered losing part of one’s soul through the breath, or having to do with evil spirits. That’s why we say bless you.’ A Tiberius Caesar spell is cast by having the mark ingest the brew, but the mark has to do so willingly.”

  “Is there an antidote?”

  “According to this, it should pass within a week or so. It’s not deadly, just a nuisance, really. Rather like having an actual cold.”

  I thanked her and disconnected just as Aidan pulled into a valet parking spot in front of a fancy restaurant near the Ferry Building.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “You need dinner,” Aidan responded, “and so do I. Please, my treat.”

  Coqueta was a Spanish restaurant, decorated in the relaxed yet upscale way of many of San Francisco’s bayside eateries. The valet and the hostess seemed to know Aidan, the latter fluttering her eyelashes and fawning all over him when he requested a patio table. Outside, overhead heaters kept us warm and snug despite the cool breeze off the water. The bay itself was dark and still at this hour, but the lights along the Bay Bridge twinkled, and the homes and businesses of Oakland and Emeryville and Berkeley on the other side of the bay led the eye up into the hills.

  The usually incessant seagulls were quiet, and I imagined I could hear the water lapping gently at the piers.

  I felt weary. If I really was suffering under a befuddling spell, I wondered whether I could will it away with the proper attitude, as Conrad had suggested. On top of everything else, I had missed the preview of the estate sale this afternoon. Then again, maybe I wasn’t going to need a wedding dress after all. Just the thought of Sailor sitting in jail, waiting for me to figure this thing out . . . Depression settled over me like a shroud.

  “So, what did that little chat with Renee tell us?” I asked Aidan after the waiter took our orders and opened a bottle of wine.

  “Not as much as I’d hoped.” Aidan waved off the waiter and poured the wine himself into two stemmed glasses. “She’s still trying to win you over, I’d say.”

  “Renee said something about you once . . . ,” I began.

  “Only once?” Aidan said with a crooked smile.

  “She said: ‘Who died and made Aidan boss?’”

  “Ah. And what did you tell her?”

  “I said I had no idea. So, Aidan, how did you become boss of the San Francisco magical community?”

  I didn’t expect him to answer me. Politician-like—or similar to Oscar and so many other magical folk—Aidan almost never answered a direct question with a direct answer. Especially when that question was about his past.

  But he didn’t immediately dissemble, and seemed to be lost in thought, staring into his wineglass. His golden hair sparkled in the light of the overhead lamp, darker lashes framing his blue eyes. I could see his glamour shimmer, ever so slightly, as he shifted in his seat.

  “When I first arrived here from Germany, I was in bad shape,” he began. “That was fifteen years ago.”

  “You were in Germany when I was?”

  He nodded. “You really don’t remember, do you? I was there. Anyway, after I came to San Francisco, I needed to lie low for a while, concentrate on healing. I arrived with nothing but the injuries of which you’ve seen proof.”

  I thought of how Aidan walked around with the glamour that recalled his old self, before the burns. Renee had told me he was looking for the fountain of youth. Was that true, or was he simply trying to heal himself? It took a lot of energy for him to maintain the glamour, energy that he needed now if there was a supernatural battle brewing.

  “Maybe you should drop the glamour,” I suggested. “Let people see the real you. Your friends won’t care.”

  “Do you really believe that?” he asked, flashing me a mocking smile. “But in any event, it matters to me. And speaking of bad old times, we really should try to help you remember everything that happened. I think we could manage it if you were willing to stay in the trance for a longer period of time.”

  I nodded, but was still nervous. Maybe it was my imagination, but I’d felt like my energy was drained the last time we melded our energies. Something similar had happened with Patience, though not to the same degree. I just didn’t feel up to much of anything, now that I thought about it.

  “For the moment, maybe you could give me the broad outline?”

  Aidan took a sip of wine and sat back in his chair. “As you know, your father was going down the wrong path.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t remember the particulars, but I knew my father was bad news. He had succumbed to the temptation of power, to the desires that I occasionally felt coursing through my own veins.

  “He and I had worked together previously. Your father is immensely gifted, Lily; clearly, he passed his abilities on to you. But as his powers grew, his confidence gradually turned into arrogance. He began experimenting with dark forces, almost as if he were playing a game, tempting fate. I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen to me, claimed I was jealous of his power. Which, to be fair, I was.”

  Aidan paused and took another sip of wine. “In vino veritas, yes? Shall I continue?”

  I nodded.

  “Not long before you arrived in Germany, he had been working on something, but he wouldn’t tell me wh
at it was. I had my suspicions. I took note of the books he consulted, and in my free time attempted to discover what he had been looking for. It gradually became apparent that he was researching spells to summon and control not one demon, but a small group of them. A fool’s quest, as I am sure you already know.”

  “Why would he do something so reckless?”

  “Perhaps sheer ambition, or maybe he was simply bored. Your father was a very powerful practitioner, greatly admired for the natural ability he had spent years honing and perfecting. Maybe he was looking for a new world to conquer? He became fascinated by the grimoire called the Lesser Key of Solomon, and in particular the Ars Goetia, or the hierarchy of demons. But controlling a demon is a feat few have attempted, and even fewer have accomplished, at least over time. Most are seduced by the power, and the roles eventually shift.” Aidan paused. “Do you wish me to continue? You may not like what you hear.”

  “Go on.”

  “I tried to talk to him about what he was doing, but I was young and foolish and he wouldn’t listen to me. I became angry—how we mortals hate it when our idols are toppled. We argued for some time, but after one particularly nasty blood ritual, I told him that I no longer wished to continue my training with him, that I could do better on my own, without him or his magic. He burst out laughing.” Aidan shrugged. “It took a while for my ego to recover from that blow, let me tell you.”

  “And then? What happened next?”

  “You happened next. I had no idea you existed, much less that you had inherited your father’s powers. You showed up at the door, and the minute your father laid eyes on you, he began to doubt his path. Your presence finally woke your father up to the risk he was running in his pursuit of power. He faltered in his resolve, dangerously so, and the binding spell he had cast over the demon portal began to slip. You don’t remember any of this?”

  I shook my head. I remembered the trip to Germany, I remembered taking a taxi to my father’s house, and I remembered knocking on the huge oak doors. I remembered the door swinging open. . . . But everything from that point on was a blank.

  “Your father hid what he was doing from you, and tried everything to get you to leave his house—he threatened; he cajoled; he promised you things—but you refused to go. This went on for days, with the demons growing stronger as your father grew weaker and less focused.”