by Sharon Pape
Travis and I said our goodbyes and made our way down the driveway, edging past Tony’s rental car, to the curb where we were parked. A group of boys in their early teens were playing a rough game of dodgeball in the cul-de-sac. The ball missed its intended target and flew straight at Tony’s car, smashing into the side. I was thinking poor guy can’t catch a break, when the world erupted in searing light and ear-shattering noise.
Chapter 28
When I opened my eyes, I was in a hospital with no recollection of why I was there. The last thing I remembered was saying goodbye to the Russos. There was a big blank spot where the memories should have been. I had half a dozen small bandages on my arms and legs. My back hurt where it pressed against the bed and my head throbbed like a bad toothache.
Where was Travis? Whatever happened to me, must have affected him as well. Anxiety welled in my chest. I pushed myself up against the pillows so I could reach the curtain around my bed. The effort made my head spin, but I managed to move it enough to see that there was another bed in the room. It was stripped down to the mattress. A set of folded linens was piled in the center of it. Whoever had been in that bed, no longer needed it. With that thought came other questions that pumped up my anxiety until I thought it would burst through the walls of my chest. I needed answers and if I didn’t get them in the next few seconds, I was going to climb out of the bed and track them down myself!
I found the button to call the nurse’s station. I pressed it and counted to twenty. When no one appeared, I swung my legs off the side of the bed. The room tilted and spun. I gripped the edge of the mattress and waited for it to stop. I had to find Travis. I planted my feet on the cold floor and tried to stand on my own. Darkness closed in on me. I gritted my teeth and locked my jaw, determined not to succumb to it, but the darkness was swallowing me.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the bed. The nurse was taking my pulse. She smiled at me. “Welcome back. You got a little too adventurous.”
“I can’t just lie here. I have to find Travis. I have to figure out what happened to us.”
“Your friend is here. He just went downstairs for coffee. Take some deep, slow breaths and try to relax. From what I understand, you were both very lucky.”
A moment later, Travis walked in with a container of coffee. When he saw that I was awake, his whole face brightened as if a spotlight had been trained on him. I scoured him for injuries. There was a small bandage along his jaw and another on the hand holding the coffee.
The nurse finished checking my vitals. “Don’t let her get out of bed again,” she said to Travis as if it was his fault I wound up on the floor.
“Yes ma’am,” he said with a salute.
I was nearly jumping out of my skin with the need to hug him to me and feel his arms wrapped around me. But he was taking the nurse’s warning to heart. I had to make do with a gentle kiss on the cheek as if I might break from a more passionate one. He moved the only chair closer to the side of the bed and took a swig of his coffee.
“Please, tell me what happened,” I said. “I can’t remember a thing.”
He closed his hand over mine. “Someone planted a bomb on Tony’s rental. We were caught in the shock waves. I was farther from the blast, so it had less of an impact on me. You suffered a concussion and some second degree burns.”
“What about Tony and Courtney?”
“They’re fine. We’ve been texting. The fire jumped from the car to the garage by the time the fire department arrived. They lost some stuff they were storing in there, nothing important. There was no damage to the rest of the house. But they feel awful we were hurt trying to help them and they’re really scared.”
“They’d be crazy if they weren’t. Whoever is out to kill Tony isn’t going to give up.”
“I told them to demand police protection. Give me a second. They made me promise to let them know how you’re doing.” While he updated them, I leaned back against the pillows and took a deep breath. The anxiety was slowly filtering away, but I still had no recollection of the explosion or the trip to the hospital. Merlin might have a spell to recall memories. I didn’t know if I could trust any spell I created while my brain was busy healing. It wasn’t the kind of question the nurse or doctor could answer.
Travis tucked his phone back in his pocket. “They send their best.”
It dawned on me that the bomb must have been what Tilly had foreseen. “Does my aunt know what happened?”
“Yes, I figured you’d want me to call her. It took a lot of convincing to keep her from driving up here to take care of you herself. Being pigheaded seems to run in your family.” I didn’t have a clever comeback. “Listen,” he said, a frown puckering the skin between his brows. “I spoke to the doctor before you woke up. He wants to keep you overnight for observation—to make sure all your organs are functioning properly. Shock waves pass through your whole body. They can do a lot of damage.”
I was shaking my head while he was still talking. “No way. I’m fine. I’m not staying here tonight. I’ll heal more quickly under Tilly’s care.” To emphasize the point, I threw back the covers and started to get up. Travis set his coffee on the bedside table, scooped me up and tucked me back in.
“Not so fast. People who are fine don’t pass out from standing up. You’ve been through a traumatic event. You can’t rush things.”
“We’ve both gone through this before and I don’t recall you listening to the doctor’s advice back then or Tilly’s for that matter.”
Travis ran his fingers through his hair. “All right, all right. There’s no use arguing with you once your mind’s made up. Let’s get some food into you. That may help with the dizziness.”
I had to sign a form saying that I was leaving against medical advice. The nurse made it clear she thought we were both crazy.
Scrambled eggs and an English muffin later, he was helping me into his car.
We were quiet for the bulk of the trip home. Shock waves and fatigue are not conducive to lively conversation. Left to wander, my mind poked around the case. The multiple attempts on Tony’s life led me to believe he was withholding information from us. He had to bear more responsibility for Scott’s death if someone was hunting him like this. For that matter, we hadn’t yet figured out what Genna’s role had been. But she was beyond our help. If only there were some way to communicate with Scott. He had all the answers. I couldn’t ask Morgana and Bronwen to look him up. Morgana had already undergone remedial training for a wayward remark to me. I didn’t want to be responsible for getting her into more trouble.
I fell asleep for the last hour of the trip. Travis woke me when he pulled into my driveway. I was disoriented for a few moments, the remnants of a dream floating around in my head. I tried to piece it back together, but then the front door of my house flew open and Tilly did a neat little shuffle-run to the car. Merlin was behind her with Froliquet at his side. Although he’d left the door wide open, the cats remained at the threshold as if it was an invisible barrier. I caught Sashkatu peeking out of the living room window, but the moment he realized he’d been spotted, he disappeared. He had a reputation to protect.
Travis helped me into the house with his arm around my waist for support. Tilly claimed my free arm. Merlin tried to help too, but only managed to tangle his feet with Tilly’s. Before we all went down in a heap, Travis picked me up and carried me straight to the couch. He looked exhausted.
“You have to stop treating me like I’m going to break,” I told him, “or we’ll need to start carrying you next.”
He laughed. “You really know how to threaten a guy.”
Tilly made me a mug of her whole body healing tea that she mixed with another tea of sage, turmeric, ginseng, lemon balm, and rennet to mend the brain. She forced Travis to drink a cup as well. Merlin recited a spell he’d come upon in the family scrolls and surprised even himself by remembering al
l the lines. Froliquet seemed to be having a beneficial effect on him.
Tilly fed all the animals, and Travis called to have pizza delivered for the rest of us. When we were finally alone again, he carried me up to bed and fell asleep beside me with his shoes still on.
Chapter 29
Travis and I slept for ten hours straight. My cats were pacing around looking for their breakfast, but Sashkatu must have made it clear that I was not to be disturbed. Although he often acted like their union representative, when I needed help, he was quick to change camps. Travis left for the Glen after two cups of strong coffee and my assurance that I was able to take care of myself. Even if I’d needed help, I would have called on my aunt or Elise before keeping him away from work. He was anchoring the evening news and had some catching up to do. Broadcast news could be a fickle mistress, always being wooed by younger, more attractive, better spoken men and women with rocketing demographics.
I didn’t have to worry about losing my gig to some new sorcerer scrambling up the ladder to overtake me, except for a daughter of my own. And I would be rooting for her. As secure as my career was, whenever I was away from Abracadabra for more than a day, I felt the tug to reconnect with the ancestral magick at its heart.
Tilly had insisted on keeping the shop open for business while I was gone, saying she could do with a respite from baking. She was such a natural saleswoman that many of my products needed restocking. Dried herbs and plants had to be combined in the right amounts to create dozens of teas for different purposes. Beauty products required botanicals to be cooked down and mixed in precise quantities. And all my wares required the extra help that came from the addition of magick. But I had no right to complain—I’d come home to full coffers. Even so when the phone rang, I was glad for the distraction.
“Guess what?” was the response to my hello.
“Charlotte.” I knew her voice by its breathless quality, as if she were calling while running a marathon.
“I didn’t say guess who? I said guess what?!”
I laughed. “How about we try a normal conversation?”
“You’re really no fun anymore.” She sounded exasperated.
“I think you’ve forgotten. You always called me the party pooper, the buzz kill. I was never the fun one. You’re getting me confused with Genna.” Saying her name still made my chest tighten like a fist around my heart.
“Oh, you’re right.” Charlotte’s voice flattened like a soufflé during a thunderstorm.
“All right, you leave me no choice but to give you the answer – not that you deserve it. I’m coming to pay you a visit.”
In the ten years since graduation, Charlotte had never flown in from the west coast to see me. And now she was coming back so soon after the reunion? Something was up. “Any special reason?” I asked.
“Two of them. I’m going to be decorating a client’s six thousand square foot pied-à-terre in Manhattan, so I’ll be back and forth a bit.”
“And the other reason?”
“We have to talk. Actually I have to talk. You just have to listen. Now I’m late for a meeting. I’ll send you my itinerary.”
I stood there staring at the phone as if the empty screen could answer all the questions Charlotte had prompted with her announcement. They would plague me until she arrived. It was futile to try to dismiss them from my thoughts. I never had the discipline to restrict my thoughts for more than a few minutes at a time. Morgana had claimed she had absolute control over her thoughts, to which Bronwen always replied rubbish. The truth was probably somewhere in between.
I was stirring the liquids that were bubbling away on the small stovetop, when the bells over the door chimed, and two male voices drifted back to me. I couldn’t make out the words, but their tone was high-spirited. I turned off the burners. Ruining all the lotions and potions, unguents and creams this late in the process was not to be contemplated. A whole day’s work would be lost and I’d have to replace the raw ingredients, not all of which were easy to come by.
“Hello?” one of the men called out. “Anyone here?”
I didn’t shout a reply. My grandmother had drummed it into my head that even a sorceress should act professionally when dealing with the public. “Can I help you?” I asked as I approached them. They were in their late teens or early twenties, college boys on a summer road trip perhaps. They looked at each other, suddenly at a loss for words. The tall one with blond streaks in his hair found his voice.
“Yeah—hi. We heard you sell magick spells. If it’s true, we’d like to buy one.”
“It’s true.” I glanced out the window to see if there were others in their group who had dared them to come in. The street was empty.
“But do they really work?” asked the shorter, curly haired one.
“They can if you believe in the magick and have good intentions. What kind of spell are you looking for?”
“A…you know…a…love spell.” Blond Streaks was blushing and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He was telling the truth. Curly was having trouble keeping a straight face, but he wasn’t mocking his friend. He was dealing with his own awkward discomfort. Expressions and body language often told me more than words.
“You want a spell to make girls fall in love with you?” I summed up.
“Yeah,” he said, clearly relieved that I understood.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you. A spell like that is meant to subvert someone’s will. It’s black magick. But I’ll tell you how to go about it without a spell.”
Blond Streaks’s shoulders slumped. “I know what you’re going to say—the same thing my mom says. Be a gentleman, be thoughtful, be helpful, be her friend. I tried that, but it didn’t work. I wound up being her friend. Now I have to listen while she goes on and on about how much she loves Matthew.”
“Now there’s a dude who must have found some serious black magick,” Curly said, “’cause he’s way out of Jessi’s league. She belongs with Jared. You just have to look at them to know I’m right. It’s a travesty, a regular travesty.” I held myself back from telling him that there were better measures of a relationship than how a couple looked together.
Blond Streaks seemed so dejected, I ignored my better judgment and offered him hope. “I can give you a spell for patience. If Matthew and Jessi break up, you’ll be there to pick up the pieces. It wouldn’t be the first time love grew from friendship.”
He perked up a bit. “Yeah sure, what do I have to lose?” I led him to the chair near the counter and gave him a pad of paper and a pencil. “What’s this for?”
“You have to write down the spell. It helps to make it yours. I recited the words slowly enough for him to jot them down.
Time is of no consequence
For love that will not stray.
Patience grant me so I see
That what cannot be won today
May yet come to be.
“You will need to rewrite the spell each time you use it.”
“When do I use it?”
“Whenever you get impatient,” Curly supplied. “You’ve needed this spell since way before you fell for Jessi.”
“You—shut up.”
“Your friend is right,” I said. “When you feel you’re losing patience, rewrite the spell and recite it three times.” He asked how much he owed, but I told him it was on the house. They were on their way to the door, when Froliquet came racing from the hall that connected my shop to Tilly’s. I didn’t know a marmot could move that fast. She was headed toward the door too.
“Grab her,” Merlin bellowed as he came into view, running with a staccato gait like an ancient cartoon figure. But by that time, she’d passed me.
“Don’t open the door!” I yelled to the young men, but Curly had already pushed the door open. Caught halfway out, the two of them kept going, closing the door behind themselves as
quickly as possible. In the last second, Froliquet made her escape between the closing door and the jamb. Muttering a string of what must have been Old English profanities, Merlin barreled toward the door, another marmot on his heels. Two marmots? What had the wizard done now?
Tilly shuffled in at the end of the procession, mumbling. “I told him not to do it. I begged him not to do it. Did he listen? Of course not.”
“Watch Froliquet,” Merlin said, galumphing after the escapee. I hoped he could tell the difference between the two marmots, because I couldn’t tell them apart. I scooped the remaining marmot into my arms and she cuddled against me, a good sign that she was indeed his familiar. Tilly plopped down in the chair by the counter.
“What the heck is going on?” I asked her.
“Our old great granddaddy was certain Froliquet was lonely, so he cast a spell to bring her a friend. I guess we should be grateful only one answered the call. On the other hand, if that marmot bumps into the wrong person the police may have no choice but to confiscate both of them. My head is spinning at the thought.”
Twenty minutes later, there was still no sign of Merlin or the other marmot. I put Froliquet in my aunt’s lap, intending to go search for them. The wizard met me at the door, wheezing and carrying a cat. He headed straight for the chair, which Tilly vacated in the nick of time.
“All’s well that ends well,” he said, collapsing into it. “I don’t wish to hear any more on the subject.”
“Where’s the other marmot?” I pressed him. “And please tell me you didn’t see Beverly or Paul.”
Tilly set Froliquet on the floor. “And what are we supposed to do with the cat?”
“You women don’t know when to stop yammering. We didn’t bump into anyone and the other marmot is right here.”
“That’s a cat, you old fool.”
Merlin looked down at the creature in his lap. “Oh right, I transmuted the marmot into a cat while I was chasing her, in case we did come upon the wrong people.” I prayed no one saw that transformation or we’d be in a lot bigger trouble than harboring marmots.
