Surely if anything had been suspicious, truly suspicious, the police would have followed it up.
The two men drank themselves just silly enough to stay on their A-game. They had another presentation tomorrow.
Brandon held his glass up. “Here’s to Richard. He was an ass, but look what he got us.”
Dan clinked their pilsners together with a heartfelt “Amen to that!”
Just as he was shooting the last of his beer, Brandon realized that Richard had given him Delilah, too. If the other man hadn’t been such a jerk to her, they never would have met. He raised another salute to Richard, but he didn’t tell Dan what this one was for.
Delilah woke up long before her alarm that night. Rolling over, she opened one eye, staring at the red numbers on the face of the clock. 1:04.
She blinked. It was full dark outside, although the street light just outside her window gave some faint illumination through the glass. With a deep breath, she closed her eyes again, telling herself she could get another hour’s worth of sleep.
By the time the clock read 1:14 she quit lying to herself. There was no way she was going to get back to sleep tonight. Throwing the covers back, she slid from the warm bed, waking up the last little bit as her feet hit the carpet.
Without thinking, she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. When she finished, she was left standing there in front of her mirror, thinking, Now what do I do?
It wasn’t like she could just turn on the TV and watch for an hour. The only things on were infomercials. If she ordered any more as seen on TV products Tristan would have her head. She debated dressing for work, but there was really no point. She wasn’t hungry enough to make it worthwhile to cook something.
She sat on the edge of her bed in her jammies and tried to think.
It only took a moment for the idea to come.
She owed herself a spell. Or ten.
Inspired, she began bustling about. She gathered her implements from the living room side cabinet where she kept them. Never ashamed of what she was or where she came from, Delilah nevertheless understood that flaunting her witchcraft was a bad idea. So her sea salts and incense coals and her herb bundles and sacred dishes all stayed behind the closed doors of the sideboard until she needed them.
The piece of beautiful handcrafted teak had been handed down from her grandmother. As the oldest female, she had been in line to inherit it, as had her own mother. Once, she believed her family should buck tradition and give the chest to Juliet, the more powerful of the Goodman daughters. But her grandmother insisted the chest was hers. The tradition was in place for a reason—it would always be the oldest daughter who had need of it—and Delilah wasn’t to fight that. Later, she realized Juliet had no need of a place to store herbs and wands she didn’t use. And, of course, eventually, there had been no one but herself to keep it.
One day she would pass it on to Tristan’s oldest daughter. Not that he was headed that direction anytime soon. The colossal explosion between herself and Juliet had affected him, too. In ways that Delilah was still seeing. The hardest part had been David—they had all loved him. All believed him. And he’d managed to fool them all.
Delilah knew her family—with maybe the exception of Jules—would have protected her if they could. But David had gotten inside and taken advantage. And none of them saw it until it was too late.
Only as she set out the hand-crafted glass bowls, the wand worn smooth from years in her grandmother’s hands, and the small orbs of crystal, did she think again that the cabinet just might be handed to her own daughter one of these days. She refused to think of a child with green eyes and chocolate brown curls.
In fact, that was the very reason she needed to cast this spell. It was horribly clear that her thinking was anything but clear where Brandon was concerned. Here she was daydreaming about children with a man who didn’t even know her religion.
In moments, she was set up at her coffee table/altar. The magazines were set aside and the ceremonial knife removed from the wall. She stripped down to her all cotton white t-shirt and undies. Then she took a moment to center herself, to take a deep breath and let go of any of her stress—or at least as much as she could.
She began.
She walked to each of the candles she placed around the room. One at a time, she cupped her hand around the wick and blew the candle to life. She repeated the incantation for each of the four corners, then knelt before the implements on her altar.
Through a series of spells she asked for sight and clarity.
Once, she’d been much better at reading people as she touched them. But that had been because she regularly kept up with her spellwork. Constantly casting on herself to make her stronger had the desired effect. Delilah hoped to reclaim some of it tonight.
Eventually, she finished the work. Her head felt clearer already, her vision brighter as though she had put in contacts. From where she sat, she blew out all four candles with a single breath—just a little magick.
As she stood up, her legs stretched and she realized she’d been there a bit longer than she’d thought. A quick glance at the clock told her there was just enough time to get ready. Just.
She showered as fast as she could. Then blew her hair dry only enough to sling it up into a ponytail. This time she pulled the hair tie out of her jacket pocket and put the net in at home.
As her fingers worked the elastic band around her hair, a vision of herself came through. She was lying naked sprawled across her own bed, looking totally wanton and quite satisfied. She blinked.
Where had that come from?
The mirror gave nothing away, until she gave up and decided if she didn’t get her hair up, she’d be late for work. As she rotated her head to see what she was doing, her gaze caught the blue fabric rose on her hair tie.
This was what had triggered the vision. Brandon touched this tie that first night they’d been together. That vision of her laid out across her own bed sheets must have been what he saw.
Lordy, that was hot.
She wondered what else she’d see the next time she touched him.
And she was beginning to wonder less and less whether she should keep him around or not.
Chapter 20
Brandon worked his butt off on the presentation the next day, but it wasn’t as clean and easy as Monday’s. The investors didn’t whip out pens and ask where to sign. They said they had to think about it. Tell the other investors in their pool. Make a group decision.
They’d be in touch.
They asked so many questions. Some of them horribly underinformed. And they’d taken the entire day to come to their less-than-thrilling conclusion.
After the trio left, Dan stood in Brandon’s office rubbing his head. “I hate this crap. I know it’s wrong and premature to write them off and blame them for taking up our time. But it’s just as bad to hold out hope that they’ll come back tomorrow with fistfuls of money.”
Brandon agreed. “Who knows? But today is a total loss.” He was ready to rub his own head.
Dan looked like he’d put in a week of labor in the mines. “I’m ready to go-round again tomorrow. But right now, I’m going to go home and watch some football and see if I can’t pass out on my couch.”
Brandon agreed. After all, Delilah would be dead asleep right now. He wasn’t thoughtless enough to wake her up before a shift like this. So he wound up leaving the office only about fifteen minutes after Dan did.
Exhausted from the trying day, Brandon paid little attention to his surroundings as he locked up the office behind himself and dragged his sorry butt down to his car. Eventually he took one good look around before he backed his SUV out of the parking lot. Immediately a man appeared behind the car and Brandon slammed on his brakes. His first thought was that the man was either a moron or was trying to kill himself under Brandon’s tires. But he was too worn out to start up a good round of LA road rage. Besides, he wasn’t even on the road yet. And the world was fu
ll of idiots waiting to happen. So he sat there with his foot solid on the brake and waited for the man to pass, but it didn’t happen.
Because he was fairly short, the man’s head was just at window height and it was wrapped in a huge white turban. On closer inspection all the man’s clothes were white, edged with embroidery in fine threads. It was a nice enough outfit that Brandon had to wonder if the man was an actor escaped from some location shoot down the street. Or if there was a Hindi wedding missing their priest right about now.
So he was startled when the man rapped his fist against the glass, then motioned for Brandon to roll down the window. How had he gotten there so fast?
Brandon was just surprised enough to do it, not questioning the move until the window was already halfway open. The voice was reedy and crackled with a thick Indian accent. Just the thing Brandon would have expected from a character like this. “You are very lucky, sir.”
No, you’re lucky that I didn’t hit you, walking around a parking lot like that. But he didn’t say it. Just smiled and nodded and started to roll up the window.
The man spoke again. “You have a long life with a true love ahead of you.”
Oh god, not this again.
“For five dollars, I will tell you all that I see.”
“Ohhhhh.” This time he actually groaned out loud. Then he got himself together and smiled again at the man. A nice placating smile as he resumed putting the window up. “No, thank you.”
“Wait!” The man’s bony hands wrapped around the top of the glass, forcing Brandon to reverse the window direction or break the man’s fingers.
Even though he wasn’t heartless enough to just put the window up and damn the man’s fingers, he was still done with this crap. So he put on his best don’t-mess-with-me face. “What?”
“I do not charge for this. You need to know.”
Truly impatient now, at the end of a long day, there was nothing Brandon wanted to do less than listen to this man. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to be rude enough to drive away, although he desperately wanted to. “What?”
“There are strong magicks around you. On you. There are spells cast on you. Hexes.”
“Okay. Thank you for that bit of enlightenment. I’m putting the window up now.”
At that, the old man let go and took a step back, his brow wrinkling. Brandon put the car in gear and pulled forward to turn out of the parking lot. In the rearview he could see the Indian man shaking his head and frowning.
Well, he was probably disappointed he’d lost the sale.
Brandon drove away wondering if people really paid him five dollars. Maybe just to make him go away. And what kind of living did he make at that? Brandon read once that some panhandlers in Vegas made enough to put their kids through college. Still, the Indian man looked upset.
And what was that crap about spells and hexes on him?
Brandon got mad. That crap was doing exactly what it was supposed to do: make him uptight and make him want to go back and pay the five dollars to find out what the old man meant.
He shook his head most of the short drive home. But he believed he’d cleared most of the infection of ideas by the time he pulled into his own driveway and closed the gate behind him. He wound up sitting on the couch, watching football just as Dan had suggested. He microwaved a frozen dinner and missed Delilah’s cooking, but ate it anyway all the while telling himself that it wasn’t so bad.
But it was that bad. After a long, drawn-out game that first looked promising, his team lost. His microwave dinner had been one that he’d enjoyed in the past, just not now. Brandon wanted to tell himself the company had changed something. The formula for the sauce was different or it had been frozen too long, but he couldn’t quite brush it off that easily.
He knew the truth. The truth was that re-heated food no longer qualified. The other truth was that re-heated relationships no longer qualified. He’d been having the same stale go-rounds for years now. Meet girl. Like girl. Sleep with girl. Wait for something to come up that keeps it from going any further. Find next girl.
It wasn’t a very flattering look at either himself or the women he’d been dating. The fact was, he didn’t even remember half their names, they’d been so interchangeable. While he didn’t know if what was going on with Delilah was right or if it was going to completely blow up in his face, at least it was different.
Every time he saw her, he became more attached to her. More convinced that whatever was going on with him not remembering their first night wasn’t her fault. He needed, more than ever, to know if she felt any of the same feelings for him. Still, there was no way he was going to solve any of those problems while the football commentators re-hashed a game that had been thrown away at the end of the second quarter.
Eventually he hauled himself into his bedroom and rolled into bed.
But all night, thoughts bounced through his head about hexes and spells.
Something was different about Brandon. Delilah just couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
Wednesday, she’d slept all day. Her shift had gone by pretty quickly, and by eight a.m. she was home and putting away the groceries she’d stopped for on the way back. Then she’d fallen, face first, onto the fluffy comforter and tried to force her body back onto Brandon’s schedule. Though even he told her he hadn’t known what that would be, given that he and Dan were presenting to investors again all day.
Still, she shook herself awake and out of bed by four o’clock and was clean out of the shower by four-thirty. She took the time to blow dry her hair and put on make-up. By five, she was sitting on her couch with a glass of wine in hand while she waited.
Delilah figured she’d be there for a while. One, because she deserved it after making him wait last week. And two, because she hoped that meant things were going well with the investors and they had a lot of questions or were busy with paperwork. So she sipped her wine and leaned her head back against the couch cushions.
He called not ten minutes later to say he was on the way.
Delilah had hopped up and gotten down to work. She was quite proud that the oven was heating and the rice was already boiling in the steamer when he came in through the front door she’d left unlocked. She decided right then she would just give him a key. She had a few spares in the pen drawer, but he was so hyped up about something that she only got to hello before he was talking a mile a minute.
“Wait. I’m sorry.”
Delilah wasn’t sure what he was sorry for, but she didn’t have to wait more than a fraction of a second. Brandon hugged her close, lifting her to the tips of her toes, where he looked right into her eyes. “Hello.”
Then he kissed her thoroughly before sitting on her couch, which was a good thing because her knees were about to give out. Luckily, she’d already had a beer in hand for him and she held it up. As he accepted it, he started talking again.
Not all of it made sense to her. In a moment she found her feet and made her way back into the kitchen, still listening. Sipping at her wine, she got to work on the remainder of dinner while she listened to him ramble.
“These guys are very interested. It seems their problem is they want to put in more money than they have. But they wound up not signing anything today. Which is frustrating.”
“What exactly do they invest in?” She rubbed a thin layer of oil on the slabs of salmon in her hands.
“Well, we have a concept for a game. They put in the money, we hire the code writers and design people, and do a lot of it ourselves. Then we sell it to a big company and the profit goes out according to shares.”
While she sprinkled herbs and chopped broccoli, he watched her with an intensity that threatened to unnerve her. It was like he was looking for a drug deal to go down or trying to catch a card dealer doing sleight of hand.
But he kept talking, explaining the finer points of their system. How video games were developed in other ways. Their track record and the idea they had right now that people would w
ant to put their money into. He told her about games they developed and sold in the past and what kind of money and splash they’d been able to make.
She shook her head each time. Each time disappointing him that she hadn’t heard of one of his babies. Eventually she begged him to stop his questions. She pointed out her TV, and how it lacked any kind of gaming system.
Brandon walked over to the set, looking at it as though it were an alien being of some kind. Which was funny, because hers was so much more basic than his, lacking all the wires and game controllers. Also hers was a lot smaller. He popped it on and—as Tristan had predicted a week ago—it was on one of the cooking channels. He sounded almost bewildered. “This is what you watch?”
She nodded as she pulled the fish from the oven, turning it and admiring the perfect tinge to the pink meat. She looked up at him long enough to catch the frown that marred his features.
“Why do you watch this? You’re a trained chef. You can’t possibly learn anything from your TV. Can you?”
“I get ideas. I don’t know that I would have thought up baking raspberries and pears together. One of the shows made a pie with it, like, a month ago. But two nights ago I had a batch of raspberries and I made raspberry pear cream tarts. So it’s worth watching.” She set the timer and joined him on the couch for a few minutes, curling in beside him as he watched a round woman showing off a level measure of yeast for a bread recipe.
He frowned again and flipped channels, surfing like every man she knew. Only after the first ten channels went by, he cringed and apologized. “I’m sorry. It’s just been a long day and my mind is off. Does it bother you if I channel surf a little?”
“Not at all.”
But while he ran through the programs, watching each one for all of fifteen seconds, it seemed he continued to keep an eye on her.
When she got up to pull the fish from the oven.
When she removed the top on the steamer and forked out bright green broccoli onto two plates.
WishCraft Page 14
