by Sara Hanover
I dropped it as soon as I saw it.
A taunt. A dare. Perhaps even an invitation. I swept the envelope and its contents off the table and got ready to dump it in the trash, but something halted me. Scout had been asleep on the floor and raised his head to eye me speculatively. I leaned over and waved the brochure to give him a sniff. “What do you think?”
He gave a mild sneeze before rearing back and out of reach.
“Yeah, that was my impression.” I blew a short breath out, decisions colliding in my thought pattern. I’d show it to Carter when I next saw him, but no . . . I wasn’t going on my own. Couldn’t. Shouldn’t. And definitely never alone. Seriously. But tempted. Someone knew I didn’t like to back down. That the more in-my-face someone got, the more I stuck my chin out and went right back at ’em. Had they been talking to my coach?
I was not even much tempted. I’d come too close to losing my life and soul, and Scout as well. I knew I needed solid backup before I went after the vampire who might have caused all my father’s misery. The minion had scared me. Terrified me. The Master would undoubtedly be worse.
That didn’t mean, however, that I couldn’t work on some planning and scheming.
I thumbed through the offensive magic manual, looking for some more handy spells to bulk up my attack because I intended to be right there, on the front line, when it got its reckoning. Because when I get intensely scared, I get angry. When I get angry, I get stone-cold determined. Might be a hot tear or two in the corner of my eyes, but they didn’t fool those who knew me. This thing that sent me the brochure thought it knew me. Knew where I lived and that I was aware of where it operated. Knew my buttons. Decided to push them.
Boy, was it wrong. If anyone was going to push buttons, it would be me.
Smiling to myself, I began reading voraciously.
After two days of sleet, rain, and studying, I had an arsenal I could tuck into my hip pocket and feel I could do a fair amount of damage with. I also felt as though I’d put a dent in our good table.
Steptoe, in either the house or the garage, but definitely out of the weather, poked his head into the dining room.
“Still at it?”
“I think I’ve learned what I can.”
“Excellent. How about a cuppa? I’ll have it ready in a jiffy.”
“Sounds great.”
“Any cookies about?” he asked hopefully.
“Maybe. Check the tin.”
We kept our extra cookies in an old fruitcake tin, but with Steptoe and Brian/the professor about, we rarely had extras. You’d’ve thought with one of our houseguests missing, that the odds of extra cookies would have increased, but it seemed that Steptoe was determined to fill the gap. I could hear him bustle about in the kitchen and give out a triumphant “Aha!” It looked like cookies did seem an option.
Moments and a teakettle whistle later, he brought in a tray of the spoils and set it down between us. He raised an eyebrow as I closed my book.
“Do you any good?”
“Yes and no.” I sugared my tea (far less than he always did) and balanced the spoon on my saucer.
“Problem?”
“I don’t have the basic foundation for some of the spells. Don’t know how to skin shift, and I’ve never had much luck with sympathetic magic.”
“Not making any voodoo dolls this week, eh?”
“Nope.” I watched as he expertly doled out the cookies between us. “Don’t think I’ll need it with the three spells I can conjure. I could use a dozen flash-bangs, however.”
“What? Oh.”
He seemed disturbed enough at my request to not notice the cookie crumbs that escaped the corner of his mouth.
“Is there a problem with my asking?”
“No, no. Would half a dozen do?” He wouldn’t quite meet my gaze.
“Of course!”
He beamed a smile then and told me he’d have them in a day or two. Still not looking me in the face, he finished his tea and cookies, waiting politely for me to finish mine, and then whisked everything back to the kitchen to be washed, leaving me wondering.
I felt fairly certain more chemistry than magic went into his little bombs, but I could be wrong. How vital could recharging be to a lesser demon? I’d never found an answer to my earlier ruminations. I still didn’t know, and he didn’t offer an explanation. But I had my fireball and something called icicle, the opposite, and I learned how to make salt clouds on purpose. Since we were fairly near a salt ocean, I had a source which wouldn’t make that spell too awfully difficult or damaging to the environs. The spell book reminded me constantly of the imbalance that could happen if something were created out of nothing because nothing did not exist. Nothing in magic was a different locale being robbed of its asset to give me my something. Robbery could not be tolerated well at length. Magic and Albert Einstein coexisted rather well.
Had I just asked Steptoe to steal a substance he wasn’t able to manage at the moment? I thought about it before shaking my head. He’d be all right. I could depend upon him as a friend, but he’d always had his own self-interest at heart, too.
I tucked that book away in a different cereal box. We’d have to buy more cereal if this kept up. My hip vibrated as I did. I fished out my phone and saw Evelyn’s ID.
“It’s almost Saturday!” she squealed in my ear.
“Indeed, it is.” And I reminded myself I needed to have The Talk with her. “What’s the weather like?”
“Better than yesterday. News channel says the storm is on the way out, so it should be cold but decent for our luncheon. Where have you been?”
“Studying. I need to get a head start.”
“I hear you.”
“Any chance you can drive over?”
Evelyn paused. “If I can’t, Daddy will get me a driver.”
“Any time,” I told her and offered my excuse: “My closet’s a mess.”
“Seriously, Tessa? You never know what to wear!”
“Not unless it’s a hockey game.” I smiled.
“I’ll be there in an hour or so!”
“See you then.” I hung up and looked about, knowing I would have to pick the house up a bit or my mother would frown at the thought of company walking in. It wasn’t messy, but it wasn’t exactly tidy, either. I yelled around the corner, “Evelyn’s coming over!”
“Ah well. Shall I make myself scarce?”
“Nope. In fact, you can even let your tail hang out.”
“I beg your pardon!” Steptoe peered out of the kitchen.
“Really,” I told him. “It’s time Evelyn saw a little of the truth.”
He leaned a shoulder against the door jamb. “My. Think she can take it?”
“If she wants to date Hiram, she has to be able to.”
His tail came around him, its spade end dancing a bit in the air. “Maybe Hiram should be the one to tell her.”
“I don’t think he has the guts.”
Steptoe arched an eyebrow. “Now, ducks. He has laws he has to observe, and maybe you should, too.”
“I think my friendship with Evie is more important than Hiram’s shyness. Anyway, do what you want.” I waved a hand at him. “Disappear if you feel better that way.”
“I do hate being on display.”
“Then go on.” I returned to straightening up the dining room, and then drifted into the living room. “Whatever you think is best.”
He didn’t answer, and from the silence in the kitchen, I realized he’d left the house for his informal workshop in the garage. “Coward,” I muttered to myself. I puttered around, continuing to talk to myself and Scout as I went room to room and finishing upstairs, where I hung the outfit I’d picked out earlier just in case I needed her critique.
She didn’t bother to ring or knock, just charged in, promptly slipped and fell
on her bottom in the foyer. She sat there blinking as I ran down the stairs at the noise.
“What happened?”
“I think the door hit me on the way in.” She raised a hand to the back of her head and rubbed it. I thought of all the new wards we had on the house as I reached down to help her out.
If she hadn’t been a friendly, would the magic have taken her head off? We’d have to be careful around here, making sure we escorted visitors over our thresholds.
Scout came clomping downstairs and danced around Evelyn, delighted to see one of his favorite people. She got over her slip and fall as she ran her hand up and down his back, fingers scratching as she went. She followed me upstairs, letting me know she’d driven herself but that there was a little ice on the road and she couldn’t stay late because the freeze might get worse. Then Evie came to a halt in my bedroom. She swung about on me.
“That looks perfectly acceptable. Have you no taste?”
“It’s complicated.”
She bounced to a seat on the end of my bed. “No, it’s not. There are primary colors and fabrics, and then complementary—”
“No. No. Don’t. Stop,” I said flatly and to my surprise she did, laughing softly.
“So are we making secret plans on how to get my parents to accept Hiram? Goody.”
I sat down on the small chair that matched my flea sale desk/nightstand. “Sort of. I have something I should tell you, but it’s difficult, and I’ll warn you right now, you may not want to hear it. If you don’t, tell me because I can’t take it back later. Like our old history teacher used to say, you can’t unring a bell.”
Her expression closed a little, and a tiny frown marked her brow. “Are you going to tell me Hiram is dating someone else? Or married?”
“Not exactly. Actually, this is more about me than Hiram.”
She put her hand on my knee. I could feel the tension even through the jeans. “Are you all right?”
“I am, but—I am also weird. Want to hear everything or not?”
“You’re not dying of anything fatal, are you?”
“Not that I know of.”
Evelyn took a deep breath, tucked her wheat blonde hair behind her ears, and looked solemn. “Okay, I do declare myself ready.” She straightened up and put on her earnest face.
“You might have noticed things have been a bit . . . strange since last spring.”
“Just a little. But like my mama always says, you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. You’ve had a rough time since your dad disappeared. I can’t judge you.” Now she says that. I had different memories from years ago, but she had evolved from frenemy to best friend.
I took a deep breath. “You might after this.”
Evelyn frowned. “It is about Hiram, isn’t it?”
“Not exactly.”
“You’re not trying to break us up!”
“No.” Although, if she didn’t take what I had to say—well, it could. I rubbed my nose which seemed to have developed a sudden itch. I was, in a word, frank. Often called tactless. Or blunt. I tried to think of how my mother would phrase the information. No one else in my circle could be a role model. Steptoe could be even harsher, the professor had never tolerated fools . . . although, to be certain, Evelyn was not a fool. Maybe a little stupid in love. I finally offered, “I don’t want you to misunderstand me.”
She rocked back. “You are trying to break us up! You’ve never approved of us. I knew it. I knew it all the time.”
“That’s not true. You know it’s not.”
She shook her head quickly, saying, “Sometimes I think I don’t know who you are. You’ve changed so much.”
“We’ve had a peculiar year, I admit, but I’ve gotten stronger because of all of you. My family. You make me better.”
A strange expression passed over her lovely face. She cleared her throat. “What you say and what you do are reconciled, showing your nature to the world. Let that never change and your path will be true.”
Great. Now she was reciting Shakespeare to me again. I fidgeted a bit on my chair, pushing her hand off my knee and said testily, “You’re not hearing me.”
Evelyn blinked rapidly several times. She put fingertips to one eyebrow. “Sorry, Tessa. I keep . . . my thoughts blank out now and then . . . maybe I’m the one with a fatal illness.” She looked very pale.
“Don’t say that!” I grabbed up a pillow. “Lie down. That was quite a slip you took in the foyer.”
She fell over and stared up at my bedroom ceiling. “Sometimes I hear myself and I think, who do I think I am, some bloody Juliet? And a little voice inside answers me, you say what you must. It doesn’t even sound like me when I talk to myself. I don’t get it.”
“Do you remember it?”
Evelyn shook her head slowly, blonde hair cascading over the pillow. “Not most of the time. You want to talk about weird, this definitely is.”
“I think you might be psychic.”
“Hey! That’s not nice.”
“Not psychotic, doofus, psychic. Like, sometimes you know things before they happen.”
“Oh. Really?”
I nodded. “Absolutely. You’ve told me things that were spot on.”
“Hmmmm.” She rotated onto one elbow. “Sixth sense.” She pointed at me. “And I still think you’re trying to come between me and Hiram.”
I let out a long sigh and then I realized she’d already told me what she would listen to: me, showing myself and my true nature. I’d start with that.
“This is me.” I held my left hand up. She’d never really had a good look at it because I usually wore wrestling gloves, cunningly made half-gloves that covered the palms, a little classier than most half-gloves. I know she’d thought it an eccentricity, fingerless coverings and all. The stone caught a stray bit of sunlight that had managed to break through the storm and shine through my bedroom window. It made the maelstrom stand out.
“Oh . . . my.” Evie leaned so far forward to look, I thought she’d slide off the bed’s corner. “That—that looks like a rock. It must hurt something awful. How did it happen and why hasn’t it been removed?” She sat up to get a better look at it. I could tell she itched to touch it. I would have, too.
“It can’t be.” I stroked the swirled caramel-and-gold surface. “It’s like marble, and I can hardly feel it anymore. As for how it got there—it’s magic.”
“Magic,” she repeated flatly.
“It exists. Believe me. It’s turned everything inside out for me, but it exists and the possibilities are . . . well, they’re all knotted up and I’m still trying to untangle them.”
She didn’t blink. I waited a long moment and then decided maybe she had stopped breathing. “Did you hear what I said?”
“About what?”
“The . . . stone. Magic.”
“You said you couldn’t take it out. How awful. You’ve had that since last spring?” She skirted around my reveal a little, like sliding on an icy bit of road.
“Yup. It happened about the time the professor’s house burned down, and his . . . nephew . . . came to live with us.” I really had the feeling she was only hearing half of what I was saying as she ignored the obvious. Could the maelstrom stone be blocking me? She watched me with a look of utter calm and a lack of comprehension.
She reached out and took my left hand. “You said it can’t come out? How can that be?” She stroked its glossy surface, and I felt it shiver through my entire body. I didn’t want her touching it, not in any shape or form. The stone was mine.
Then her slender fingers tugged on it and the stone slipped right into her hand.
My jaw dropped. Thoughts stampeded through my head, the foremost of which told me she couldn’t have it. Not yet. Maybe never. “Give it back!”
“Okay, okay. You’re right, it’s weird
.” She pushed it back into my palm and it sank like an anchor into my skin and senses.
I tried to wiggle it, but it seemed firmly in place again. Two slit eyes opened up to look back at me. Now seemed a poor time for the Eyes to wake up, but I had to roll with it, and I needed her to understand. “Okay.” I reached for Evelyn. “This is going to be stranger.”
“What?”
“I’m going to show you what the other world looks like.”
“What other world?”
“The magical one. It exists. Think of it as an alternate band of existence with different rules of physics that overlaps ours, just like that sci-fi movie we really liked.”
“The one where he gets killed over and over until he finally solves the problem.”
“Maybe not that one. The one where the two lovers keep missing each other and then finally catch up and everything is happily ever after.”
“Sure.” She didn’t look or sound convinced. Her hand felt a bit chilled in mine, but I attributed that to the stone whose warmth began to spread throughout my body. I stood up and drew her to her feet. “This way.”
I took her to the new bouquet of tell-tales in the hallway niche.
“Oh, what cute roses. That’s a new bouquet. You’ll have to tell me where you bought them,” she began, and then looked a little confused. “They’re . . . looking at me.”
“They’re not exactly roses. They’re a plant of some sort that is aware. Alive. They react. Each has their own psychic abilities and, well, they act like a home security service.”
“What?”
“Look closely.”
She did, and then she recoiled slightly, unnerved, I think, at what had to be flowers but weren’t as the Eyes of the stone revealed a bit of the tell-tale’s nature. “What . . . what do they do when something happens?”
I looked to the tell-tales who were slightly apathetic to me at the moment. “Show my friend how you sound the alarm.”
A ripple went across the bouquet. Most of them had been looking at us. Petals opened slightly and elevated, not a full-flung “Help!” though Evie would get the idea. Her mouth hung ajar for a second.
