A Cast-Off Coven (7 page)

“What guy?” I asked. “You mean Aidan?”

He nodded. “Is this what was so complicated in your life?”

“How do you mean?”

“Not so long ago you told me you couldn’t see me because it was complicated. I thought he might be the complication.”

I shook my head and tasted my champagne; it was dry and crisp, bubbly, delicious.

“I get the sense he’s more than a friend,” Max continued.

“He’s not my lover, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He chuckled, his gray eyes almost exactly the same color as the overcast sky on the other side of the windowpane. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

“Not as a general rule, no.”

“So, does this Aidan person have a last name?”

“Yes. Are you planning on looking him up?”

“Just wondered what his story was.”

“Tell me, Max, is this you being a journalist, or jealous, or both?”

In lieu of an answer, Max took a long pull on his champagne and stared at me, as though assessing my response. Finally he cracked a smile and shrugged one shoulder.

“Just curious.”

“The truth is you and I don’t know each other well enough for me to tell you all my deepest secrets.”

“So he’s a deep secret?”

I sat back in exasperation, folding my arms over my chest.

“Oops. Body language alert.” Max held up one hand in surrender. “I’m sorry, Lily, you’re right. My journalistic instincts—some would say terminal nosiness—can get out of hand. Let’s make a toast to taking it slow.”

He raised his champagne flute, and after a brief moment of consideration I lifted my own. We clinked glasses and drank.

Once we got over that, brunch was lovely. We visited the abundant buffet tables where Max kept putting fattening items such as éclairs and sausages on my plate, telling me I could use a little more flesh on my bones.

I’m a healthy, average- sized woman, nowhere near skinny. But I liked Max’s attitude.

By the time we returned to our table by the window, our plates piled high, the waiter had refilled our flutes with champagne, and we toasted the sea lions who were trying to shove one another off Seal Rock, a fierce, angry crag that stuck up from the ocean floor.

“We used to come here when I was a kid,” Max told me. “There was an old Playland on the beach with the creepiest fun house, and right here in the Cliff House was a mechanical arcade museum. I used to tell everyone I wanted to grow up to design pinball machines.”

“What happened to that plan?”

He shrugged. “Pinball machines went the way of the dodo bird. Everything’s electronic now. Doesn’t have the same romance, somehow.”

“And you’re a big one for romance?”

“Mmm.” He gazed at me for a moment across the table.

“Who’s we?” I asked. At Max’s bemused expression I clarified. “You said ‘we’ used to come here?”

“My brother and I. Occasionally my sister would join us, but she was a few years older and usually went off with her friends. But my brother and I would spend whole days.”

“Your sister’s a doctor, right?”

He nodded. “An internist over at SF General.” “And your brother? Are you two still close?”

A shadow passed over his light eyes. Max turned his attention back to his plate of food. “Not really.”

I sensed he didn’t want to follow that particular line of questioning.

“What happened to the arcade museum?”

“It moved over to Fisherman’s Wharf. Probably a lot more foot traffic, but I liked it better before. It used to be wonderfully eerie, like a secret only you knew about, crowded and dusty. Haunted.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in being haunted.” True enough: Max was a haunted man. By what? I knew he was a widower, but little else about him. But that was the point of dating, right, to get to know someone? To come to trust them? I was a grown woman, but given my unconventional past, I still felt like a novice at this whole romance thing.

Distracted by the sparkle in Max’s light eyes as he spoke, by the time dessert rolled around I forgot all about the plate of sugar-dusted Belgian waffles and chocolate-dipped strawberries in front of me. Max regaled me with stories of his time working as a reporter for Reuters in Europe and Africa, making me laugh until I snorted with a description of getting lost in Tangiers with an empty gas tank, a vociferous Italian photographer, and one very annoyed goat. When Max asked me about my own globe-trotting past, I found myself opening up, just the tiniest bit, about never quite fitting in . . . and my protracted search for a sense of home.

Handsome, smart, funny, and heterosexual, he even had a job. Max was the elusive Holy Grail of San Francisco’s single straight women. What more could any woman want?

Still, Aidan’s barbs had stung. Max was ill at ease with my being a witch. But my magick was a huge part of who I was, and it had taken me a long time to accept myself. Did I want to get involved with a man who would prefer that I deny my powers? Would Max be willing to change for me instead of asking me to change for him? I reminded myself that I was in no hurry to plan a wedding, caressed my medicine bag, and willed myself to relax.

After brunch, we explored the decks around the Cliff House and looked out over the ocean. But what really fascinated me was a series of low, crumbling concrete walls, rusty pipes, and low pools that marched up the terraced hill.

“What’s all that?” I asked.

“The old Sutro Baths. It was built in the late 1800s and housed a huge swimming pool complex, with separate pools of fresh water and salt water. But the place fell into disrepair and burned down in the sixties. Now it’s San Francisco’s version of Roman ruins. Want to climb around?”

“Could we?”

“Sure.”

We descended a set of steep concrete stairs to the ruins. I was relieved I’d worn my Keds. The ground beneath our feet was wet and slippery from fog and the last high tide; had I worn a froufrou pair of sandals, I would have tumbled over the edge into the abyss. A sign warned us to climb with care, or better yet, not to climb at all, but it did not tell us to keep out. I was surprised to find the ruins open to passersby in such a litigious society: It reminded me of hiking in Europe, where the prevailing sentiment seemed to be that if you were stupid enough to fall and hurt yourself, you shouldn’t expect any sympathy from the villagers.

A salt-tinged wind whipped off the ocean, making me glad I was wearing my 1940s cocoa brown wool coat, vintage Hermès scarf, and butter-soft leather gloves. Max took my gloved hand in his to help me from one wall to the next, and then didn’t let go as we scampered up and down short flights of stairs, peeked into small rooms, and made our way through shadowy, briny tunnels. Wisps of fog made it easy to believe this place was haunted.

“I’d like to take you to another place I love, out near Muir Woods,” Max said as we emerged from a tunnel and climbed atop a broad abutment.

“The giant redwoods? I’ve been dying to see them!”

He smiled and pushed strands of wind-whipped hair away from my face. His eyes were a brilliant gray, like today’s sky, but his smile couldn’t hide a tinge of sadness. I tried to read him, but, as usual, his guard was up.

“Then see them you shall.”

He leaned in to kiss me. I felt tingly even before his lips touched mine.

His cell phone rang out. Max took a step back, reached into his jacket pocket, glanced at the display, then looked at me with regret. “I have to take this.”

“Of course,” I said, and walked a little farther out on the abutment to give him some privacy. Still, his voice drifted easily over to me.

“What?”
His eyes flickered over to me. “Are you sure? Yeah. Twenty minutes.”

When he joined me a moment later, his expression was troubled.

“Why didn’t you tell me you saw Carlos Romero last night?”

“It didn’t occur to me. Why would it?”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “Tell me now. Please.”

I shrugged and remained mute, annoyed at this turn of events.

“Were you planning to mention anything about knowing Jerry Becker?” Max shook his head in exasperation. “It’s been what, a whole
week
since you were involved in a homicide?”

“I should get back to the store.” I turned and started up the damp concrete steps toward the street.

“The store can wait,” he said. “I want some answers.” I paused. I felt my blood rise.

There haven’t been a lot of men in my life. My father had walked out on my mother and me when I was a toddler, leaving no forwarding address. My second grade teacher, Mr. Sweeney, made me sit in the corner every recess for a week after I corrected his many spelling and grammar errors. My high school principal kicked me out of school when the star quarterback, who had been harassing me, developed a mysterious ailment that caused him to fumble the football whenever the team was first and goal.

And those were some of my better experiences with men.

So I wasn’t good at deferring to male authority, especially when—as was so often the case—it arose from a sense of entitlement, rather than from earned respect.

A gust of wind snarled my tresses until they snaked around my head like Medusa’s locks. I felt the cold prickle of angry power gathering along my spine and coursing down to my extremities. I closed my eyes and concentrated on reining in my anger before I hurt someone. Finally, more in control, I turned to face Max.

“I don’t guess you’re the one to make that decision, Max.”

Our eyes held, and his expression softened. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I was out of line. That phone call caught me off guard. May I ask you a question?”

“Yes. But I may not answer it.”

“Fair enough. What were you doing at the School of Fine Arts in the middle of the night?”

I was torn. Should I tell him I was there looking for ghosts? Not half an hour ago I had resolved that Max would have to accept this part of me. But now I hesitated.

I liked Max—a lot. I wanted him to return the sentiment. And I didn’t want to feel like a freak.

“I was having coffee with Maya and a friend of hers.” I wimped out with a half-truth. “And we took a little tour of the school.”

“And did you find the ghost?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“What makes you think—”

“Give me a little credit, Lily. With your talents, it’s easy to guess that your friends wanted you to look around for the things that go bump in the night.”

“Hey,
I
know what we should talk about: Why doesn’t Inspector Romero like you?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

“I thought you had to get back to the store.”

“I can be flexible. Depending on the conversation.” Max looked out over the ocean. The greenish gray of the water segued seamlessly into the ashen gray of the sky. The air was filled with the staccato caws of the gulls, the hoarse barks of the sea lions, and the rhythmic pounding of the surf. Finally, Max took a deep breath.

“My wife—my
late
wife, Deborah—was Carlos Romero’s cousin.” He spoke with difficulty, as though the words came at a huge cost. “Law enforcement is a tradition in Deborah’s family. When I did a piece on corruption in the police department, it put us at odds. Carlos thought I was using the family’s connections to investigate the story.”

“Were you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know, Lily. I’m an investigative journalist. It’s not something I can switch on and off like a lamp.”

“You said something about your wife’s death. . . .”

He started up the steps. “Let’s get going.”

Max was usually a hard read, but as he passed by me on the steps, I felt sadness and rage emanating from him in waves.

And something nastier: guilt.

All the way home Max and I ignored important subjects. We made plans to visit the redwoods, but there was a perceptible distance between us wrought of so much that was not said. I reminded myself that I hardly knew him, after all. Maybe “we” were not meant to be.

I was happy to return to Aunt Cora’s Closet and all the warm and welcoming elements of my new home: the scent of fresh laundry and herbal sachets, the comforting hum from my inventory, the damp snout of my miniature potbellied pig, and a plump, fiftysomething Wiccan wearing kohl eyeliner and a garland of fresh flowers twining through her fuzzy brown hair.

“Lily! Blessed be!” Bronwyn came out from behind the herbal counter to envelop me in swaths of incense-scented gauzy purple material. I let myself sink into her embrace, savoring Bronwyn’s ability to love those around her with neither condition nor restraint.

“Maya was just telling me what happened at the school last night.” Bronwyn pulled away, concern on her face. “Oh my
Goddess
! What a terrible thing!”

“Yes. It was . . .” I trailed off, searching for how to describe finding someone moments after his life has slipped away. I could feel the frigid stillness of the body. I was only human, after all. “. . . Intense.”

Maya snorted at my understatement. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor near the dressing room alcove, sorting through a black plastic Hefty bag full of big band-era clothes.

“Oh, by the way, Lily,” Maya said, “Ginny Mueller called earlier to see if you still wanted to pick up those clothes from the school.”

I had been wondering how to snoop around the school on Aidan’s behalf without seeming ghoulish. Picking up those clothes was the perfect solution. I glanced at my watch.

“Actually, if one or both of you are willing to mind the store till closing, maybe I could go get them this afternoon.”

“I’ll stay,” Maya volunteered, then added with a shiver, “Just don’t ask me to go back to school yet. I’m still dealing with last night.”