by Lucy March
He let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah. I guess. You need me to get on a plane?”
“Can you?” I asked.
“They’ve got planes here,” he said cryptically.
I sighed. “Get on one, then. At the very least, it’ll be nice for you to come and visit Liv. You’re the closest thing she’s got to family.”
The only reason I knew Cain was still on the phone was because of the background noise. Liv had never known her sister Holly, and Holly had died before she and Cain could get married, but still. Cain was family to Liv, and I knew she missed him. If she wasn’t going to tell him that, I would. Cain wasn’t a guy who expressed his emotions a whole lot, but he’d loved Holly, and he cared about Liv, and it wouldn’t kill him to drop in every now and again.
“You still there?” I asked, even though I knew he was.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m here.”
I hesitated a moment, about to let him go, then I said, “Hey, what would you say if I told you I made a sunflower? Physical magic? All on my own, with no formal training?”
There was no hint of laughter in his voice when he spoke next. “Christ, Easter. What the hell are you getting yourself into out there?”
I cringed. He was right, and I knew he was right but I couldn’t help myself. “I’m getting into some extraordinary shit out here, that’s what I’m getting into.”
“You coulda blown the damn windows out your house!”
“That’s why I did it in my garden shed. Plexiglass stands up a lot better, by the way.”
“You could have killed yourself. Physical magic is nothing to mess with, you hear me?”
“But you’re impressed, right?” I said. “No training. All by myself. I mean, if you were Desmond, you wouldn’t want to mess with me, right?”
He grumbled something that sounded like it could have been agreement and I said, “Get your plane ticket. Liv misses you.”
“Yeah, okay,” he muttered, but there was a pleased note in his tone. I didn’t know much about Cain’s history, but my guess was that when it came to family, Liv was pretty much it for him, too.
I heard a noise and looked to see Leo stepping out the front door, barefoot, one eye open, hair all mussed on one side, arms crossed over his bare chest, boxers hanging off his hip bones. He was an early-morning wreck, and the most beautiful damn thing I’d ever laid eyes on.
“Just get on a plane,” I said to Cain, and cut off the call. I slid the phone into my back pocket and smiled at Leo. “Hey, sailor.”
He padded down the cement steps and walked over to me, leaning against the Bug’s hood next to me.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning,” I said, and rested my head against his shoulder. He put one arm around me, kissed the top of my head, and said, “Who was that on the phone?”
“Cain,” I said. “He’s the conjurer guy I told you about. I had a thought.”
“Was it a good thought?” he asked.
“It was a desperate thought,” I said. “Probably nothing, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
He tightened his grip around my waist. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah, I will,” I said.
He looked at me, his eyes dark and worried. “How are you feeling? I mean … with the magic and everything. Are you … dizzy? Headache? Is there something we’re supposed to look for, to know when to worry?”
I glanced around; although we were sitting in the midst of what looked like gray predawn, the sky above was blue. The sun had come up; it just hadn’t made its presence entirely felt through the thick growth of trees on my property. I held out one hand, closed my eyes, and tried to find it, that source of power I had touched last night. I remembered the spark that had come from Leo, the place in my soul his touch had brought back to life, showing me where the power hid in my mind. I approached it, and once I got close, I opened my eyes.
Focus. Control. I felt the heat move through me, and the air in my cupped hand began to distort a little, like the space over black asphalt on a hot day. An awkward flame burst and shot from my palm, and then sputtered out, and I felt a wave of exhaustion run through me, as though I’d just put all my life force into that one paltry, sad display. I was breathing as though I’d just run a mile, and I leaned against Leo’s chest.
“I did it,” I said, my voice weak to my own ears. “In the daytime. That means I was right. Yaaaaaaaay.” I put up a weak fist of victory in the air and laughed, then noticed that Leo wasn’t laughing with me.
“Hey,” I said, looking up at him. “Please. Don’t.”
He forced a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t what?”
I slid off the hood, stood in front of him on wobbly legs, and took his hands into my own.
“This sucks,” I said. “It’s awful and if I was in your position, I would feel exactly the way you’re feeling now. But there’s no way out of this but through. I need you to believe in me right now, because if you believe in me, then I’ll believe in me.”
“It’s not about believing in you.” He watched me for a while, then said, “I just got you back.”
“I know. I’ve gotta power through this thing first, though, and I can’t do it if I’m constantly worrying about you worrying.”
“Then I won’t worry.” He pushed off the Bug and pulled me into his arms. It was strange how comforting that felt, how just the physical touch from this one man could make my world so much better. I closed my eyes and let myself fall into him, let him hold me up for a few moments until I got my strength back, at which point I tilted my head back to look up at him.
“We need to make breakfast and get ready.”
He smiled and kissed my nose. “Already?”
“Already,” I said. “I’ve fallen into a big pile of shit and I have to start shoveling my way out.”
“Aw,” he said, smiling. “That’s my classy girl.”
* * *
I sat Deidre Troudt and Clementine Klosterman down on the stolen stools that furnished my little garden shed, and explained everything as best I could, considering there was no small amount of it that was currently baffling me.
“You have to stay away from your triggers,” I said at the end of my speech, and handed a vial to Deidre Troudt. “That’ll keep you safest for longest, giving me time to figure out something better. If you find your magic getting out of control, if it’s happening at night, if you feel exhausted or you pass out, put some liquid in the vial and drink it down.” I glanced behind me at the case of purple vials. After the one each I was giving these two, that left four for me and the Widow. Tick tock, tick tock. “Let me know as soon as you use the one you’ve got, but if you stay away from your triggers, you shouldn’t need it at all before I get you the cure.”
Ms. Troudt looked at me. “And when will that be?”
“Soon,” I said, and hoped I looked confident. I needed these two happy and out of my hair for the moment. I turned to Clementine. “How have you been doing?”
Clementine pulled her wide eyes away from the vial in her hand, then pushed her glasses up on her nose and said, “Good, good. I got the job at CCB’s. Thanks for that. It’s so much better than the IGA.”
“Any more incidents?” I asked, but before Clementine could answer, Ms. Troudt stomped back into the conversation.
“So, you’re telling me all I have to do is stay away from Dr. Feelgood, and all this goes away?”
“Um, excuse me, Ms. Troudt?” Clementine said, her voice low.
“No,” I said, keeping my focus on Ms. Troudt. “I’m saying that if you stay away from Dr. Feelgood, it’ll get bad less quickly.”
“Ms. Troudt?” Clementine said, her voice a little louder.
“How am I supposed to do that?” she said. “I finally find the love of my life, and you want me to just stay away from him? I need to talk to him, I need—”
“Hey!”
Both Ms. Troudt and I stopped and looked at Clementine, whose face was flush
ed and whose posture was straight. I smiled.
“Yes, Clementine?” I said.
“I was about to answer you when Ms. Troudt interrupted me,” Clementine said, and she raised her eyes to meet Ms. Troudt’s, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “That was rude.”
Ms. Troudt stared at her, her eyes wide. “Who the hell are you?”
“Cl-Clementine Klosterman,” Clementine said, glancing at me for reassurance as her confidence started to fail her. I gave her a nod, and she looked back at Ms. Troudt. “You don’t remember me?”
“You were in my class?” Ms. Troudt asked.
“Mm-hmm,” Clementine said, nodding cautiously. “A couple of years ago, in the tenth grade.”
Ms. Troudt gave her an appraising look. “Yeah, I recognize the top of your head. You always had it lowered. It’s good to see your face, and you’re right. I was rude. I apologize.” She motioned permission for Clementine to speak. “Go ahead.”
Clementine took a deep breath and shifted her eyes from Ms. Troudt to me. “I, um … it did happen again, but only during the day.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Did Henry come into CCB’s? You gotta tell that kid to keep his distance, Clementine.”
“No, no … it was at home.” She swallowed hard. “My mother and I had a fight, and then I was doing the dishes, and I moved really fast, and I broke three plates, and that only made things worse…”
I paused. “Your mother? But she wasn’t at the IGA that day when everything first started, was she?”
“N-no,” Clementine stammered, and lowered her head. “But Karl called me stupid, and that’s what my mother says … sometimes … and I thought of her and that’s when I started moving really fast and…”
She trailed off. Deidre Troudt and I exchanged horrified looks.
“Your mother calls you stupid?” I asked.
Clementine kept her eyes lowered, and meekly shrugged one shoulder. “Sometimes. But only when I do stupid things. Sometimes … I do stupid things. She’s just trying to make me better.” Clementine’s eyes darted to meet mine quickly, then lowered. “She just wants me to have a boyfriend, you know. Be normal.”
“Your mother says that stuff to you?” Ms. Troudt said, her voice softer than usual.
Clementine raised her head and nodded.
“And that’s why you took the love potion?” I asked. “To get a boyfriend and get your mother off your back?”
Clementine sighed. “I really do like Henry, but … yeah.” And then her posture sagged and she hung her head again.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Deidre Troudt said. She reached over and poked Clementine in the side. “Sit up straight.”
Clementine did as commanded.
“Hold your head up.”
Clementine did that, too.
“Look at me.”
Clementine met my eyes first, and when I nodded encouragement, she timidly shifted her gaze to meet Ms. Troudt’s.
“Your mother’s a bitch,” Ms. Troudt said. “You’re not stupid, and you’re perfectly normal. You were in my class, and I’m telling you, you’re not stupid.”
Clementine sort of half rolled her eyes. “You don’t even remember me.”
“Right,” she said. “I remember all the stupid ones.”
“Okay,” I said, “all this is great, but if your mother’s your trigger, we’ve got a problem. We’ve got to get you out of your house and away from her for a while. How the hell are we going to do that?”
Deidre Troudt waved a hand in the air. “I’ve got it.” She hopped off the stool she’d been sitting on and turned to Clementine. “You’re staying with me. I’ll drive you home to get your things. I’ll tell your mother we’re doing some kind of English summer camp thing. Think she’ll buy that?”
Clementine nodded. “She won’t care. She’ll be glad I’m out of the house. But … are you sure it won’t be too much trouble? I can clean up, and I can cook…”
“It’s no trouble,” Ms. Troudt said, although her voice was more annoyed than comforting.
Clementine nibbled her lip and Ms. Troudt swatted at the air in front of her face. “Stop that. Every time you nibble your lip, you’re ruining your looks because your mother’s a bitch. Don’t let her have that.”
Annoyance flashed over Clementine’s face, and her posture straightened. “My mother’s a bitch. I’m gonna nibble my lip for a while. Back off.”
Ms. Troudt’s eyebrows raised in an expression of respect. “Okay, then.”
Clementine smiled, a real, proud smile. I smiled, too, and entertained the idea of setting up a secret camera in the Klosterman household for when Ms. Troudt returned Clementine to her mother. I kind of wanted to see that.
“This is good,” I said to Ms. Troudt as I walked them out of the garden shed. “She can keep you away from Dr. Feelgood, and you can keep her away from her mother.”
Ms. Troudt pulled her car keys out of her purse and gave them to Clementine. “You go start the car and put the AC on extreme. I hate getting into a hot car.”
“Okay,” Clementine said, then smiled wider than I’d ever seen her smile and disappeared down the path. Deidre Troudt touched my arm, keeping me from following. Once a moment or two had passed, she spoke.
“I don’t know what’s going on here, but I know it’s not good,” she said, her voice low. “I’ll take care of the kid. You take care of this.”
I nodded. “I will, Ms. Troudt.”
She rolled her eyes. “You made me a magical Disney princess foster mother. You still can’t call me Deidre?”
I hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Look. You know the whole story with my family, right?”
Ms. Troudt gave me a wry look. “I’m forty-eight years old, and you were in my class ten years ago. No, I don’t remember the details of your family.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, well. My dad deserted us when I was six, which was just as well. I don’t think he much liked being a father anyway. My mother has been pretending he’s dead for twenty-three years, because she’s afraid of how it’ll make her look if she publicly acknowledges that her husband ran off to be a drag queen. Nick played football, he made her look good in town, so she liked him. I didn’t do anything that made her look good, so I got ignored.”
Ms. Troudt’s expression softened, and I had to look away in order to keep talking. “No one aside from Nick gave enough of a crap about me to correct me, on anything. I remember at least three times when you kept me after class to give me a hard time about how I dressed, or what I ate. That mattered to me. A lot. And calling you Deidre, it just … I feel like it makes you into someone else, and that feels like a loss to me. I don’t deal well with loss.”
“Oh, honey,” she said, and pulled me in for a hug. It was warm, and soft, the way a mother’s hug is supposed to be, and I had to fight to blink away tears. “When someone your age calls me Ms. Troudt,” she said into my ear as she held me tight, “it makes me feel like the oldest fucking person in the universe. I will gladly give you a hard time about anything you want. We can start with your hair, which desperately needs cutting.” She pulled back and smiled, and I could see there was some moisture in her eyes, too. “But, please. For me. Call me Deidre.”
I laughed and wiped at the space under my eyes. “Okay. Deidre.”
“Excellent,” she said. “Now go fix this colossal clusterfuck and then we’ll have lunch and I’ll tell you you’re too skinny.”
And with that, she disappeared down the path behind Clementine.
* * *
We brought the Widow back to Peach and Nick’s house that afternoon. At first, she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of needing babysitting, but once she realized she’d be able to torture her new daughter-in-law 24-7 seven, she perked up a bit. Leo and Nick got her settled in the guest room upstairs while I sat in the living room with Liv and Peach and talked about the honeymoon.
“Oh, it was beautiful!” Peach said, flipping through the pictures of white
beaches set against implausibly blue water. “We went to this little town called Mijas, and it’s kind of off the beaten tourist track so no one there speaks English, and they were so sweet about Nick’s terrible Spanish…”
I kept one eye over my shoulder, waiting for Nick to come back down, and by the time I looked back, both Liv and Peach were watching me.
“Everything okay?” Liv asked.
“No,” I said. “But it will be.” I reached out and touched Peach’s hand. “I’m sorry I ruined your honeymoon.”
Peach lowered her eyes. “No. It’s fine. Two weeks is too long for a honeymoon, anyway.”
“Four days is too short,” I said. “And now you’ve got the Widow upstairs. This sucks and I’m sorry.”
Peach shrugged. “Nick was already getting twitchy about getting back to work.”
I heard footsteps on the stairs and I stood up. I kissed Peach on the top of the head and said, “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
I left the living room to meet Nick and Leo at the base of the stairs. Nick didn’t even look at me, which was what he did when he was pissed. It wasn’t punishment; he just hated being mad, especially at me, so he tended to avoid me until he wasn’t mad anymore. Ordinarily, I’d give him a few days to cool off, but I didn’t have that kind of time now.
Leo shook Nick’s hand, kissed me on the forehead, and went outside to wait in the Bug. Nick took one quick look at me then headed to the kitchen. I followed him out to the backyard, where I caught up with him.
“Nick, I need to talk to you.”
“Now’s not a good time, Stace.”
He walked all the way to Peach’s garden before realizing that there was no door in the back fence, no way out, and he had no choice but to turn to face me. His eyes were a solid wall of blue ice, and my stomach sank.
“Please,” I said. “Just yell at me and get it over with. I don’t have time for you to be mad at me.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why not?”
I sighed. “This whole thing is really complicated and there’s a chance … there’s a chance I might be going away in a few days…”
“Going where?”
“I don’t know.”
“With who?”
