For Love or Magic (11 page)

Liv gave Stacy a warning look. “I think Eliot would know if Desmond stuck her with a needle.”

“He's smart,” Stacy said. “And he's devious. He could drop something on her skin, she'd never know.” Stacy looked at me. “Did he touch you?”

“I don't know. We shook hands, but … I don't think he administered anything to me. And the only other stuff I ate was that Welcome Wagon lasagna.”

Addie's eyebrows rose a touch, and she gasped and put her hand over her mouth. “Gladys Night!”

I glanced around the group, thinking for a moment that perhaps Addie had just had one of those strokes that makes people say random words, but they all seemed to know what she was talking about.

“Oh, crap,” Betty said.

“Wait,” I said, leaning forward. “Are you guys talking about … Gladys
Knight,
Gladys Knight? What does any of this have to do with ‘Midnight Train to Georgia'?”

“Nothing,” Stacy said. “Gladys Night. No
K,
no Pips. She lives down the street from my mother. She's not magical. She's fifty-four years old and she believes that flowers bloom when angels fart. There's no way she'd put anything in that lasagna.”

Stacy's mother's neighbor,
I thought, and I looked at Stacy as I thought it. She looked back at me, reading my expression easily.

“Don't go pointing that fearsome intellect at me,” she said. “I didn't lace your stupid lasagna.”

Liv shook her head. “No. Stacy would never, ever,
ever
give anything to anyone against their will. Not after what Desmond did last summer. Just …
never.
Trust me.”

“Never say never,” Stacy said under her breath, eyeing me with mild threat in her eyes. She was like a cat, puffing up to look more dangerous than she really was, and despite the fact that she was pointing that puffed-up act at me, I could sympathize with where it was coming from. If I had friends and a town like this, I'd want to protect them, too.

“The
point
is,” Betty said, getting us back on track, “that Gladys Night spends every weekend doing volunteer work for Community Cares.”

The room went silent. I sighed. “And my father runs Community Cares.”

“Well…” Addie gave me sympathetic eyes. “Yeah.”

“So we've got him on opportunity,” I said.

“What's the motive, though?” Liv asked.

“The same as it's always been,” I said, feeling suddenly exhausted. “To make all the nonmagicals magical.”

Addie smiled and looked around. “Well … that doesn't sound too bad,” she said. “Might even be fun.”

“Yeah, it was sure a blast when Desmond did it to me and three other people last year,” Stacy said. “It was a hoot until we all almost died.”

“My mother
did
die,” I said, and it was then that I saw the first spark of shame in Stacy's expression. “So did my best friend, and a bunch of other people from my town. I won't let that happen again.”

If you can help it,
a traitorous voice at the back of my head added.

“So,” Betty said, ever pragmatic, “what do we do now?”

It was a good question, and none of us had the answer. Eventually, everyone shuffled out, and Addie gave me and Seamus a ride home. I slept, dreamt of a locked room filling with daisies, and when I woke up the next morning, pissed off and still tired despite a full night's sleep, I knew just what I needed to do.

 

Chapter 6

“Emerson Streat,” I said breathlessly to the skinny redhead behind the desk. “I need to speak to him.”

Amber Dorsey eyed me for a moment, sizing me up. She had hair like Little Orphan Annie, a wild fiery coif punctuated with little rhinestone dragonfly clips on either side. She wore low-rise jeans and a midriff top that exposed both her hip bones and lower ribs, which you could see clearly even when she was sitting down. Her eyes were dancing pinwheels of crazy, and she was exactly the kind of unexpected wild card Emerson would put on his front desk, the way someone else might install a fish tank of fascinating sea life for people to gawk at while they waited.

Some things never changed.

She cracked her gum and said, in a staccato and obviously put-on affectation of professionalism, “And what is your business with Mr. Streat?”

I could tell that, given a more natural environment, her response would have been,
Yeah, and what the fuck do you want?
My father always loved to play Henry Higgins to the town's most hard-edged Eliza Doolittle; it made him look like a hero to the people who liked her and a saint to the people who didn't. Plus, having crazy in the front office usually meant that people paid more attention to her and less to Emerson and whatever he was up to. This particular flower girl was fresh out of Covent Garden, as far as I could tell; the edges Emerson liked to smooth out on his front-desk women were still sharp and ragged.

“My business with Mr. Streat is personal. Where is he?” I pointed to the closed door behind her desk. “Is he in there? Is that where he is?”

Amber reached one hand, punctuated with bright red acrylics, toward the mouse. She cracked her gum again and clicked it without pulling her eyes away from mine.

“Let me
peruse
the calendar for Mr. Streat's next availability,” she said coolly.

“Now,”
I growled at her. “He has an opening right the fuck
now
.”

She didn't move, just pulled her hand back from the mouse. Her body was still, but it was also lithe and dangerous, angry energy coiled and just waiting for an excuse to strike. He'd picked a live one this time.

“I will request that you maintain a professional tone in this—”

“Emerson Streat!” I shouted, giving up on getting anywhere with Amber Dorsey. “Get your ass out here, or I swear I'll—”

The office door opened and Amber shot up from her seat. “I told her she had to make an appointment, Mr. Streat. It's not my fault. She's obviously crazy. Do you want me to call the police?”

He smiled at me; it was obvious he'd been expecting me. At least he respected my intelligence enough not to feign surprise. He set the files in his hand on Amber's desk, and said, in a voice hued with a southern sunset and perfectly cracking with just the right hint of emotion, “It's okay, Amber. This is my daughter.”

Amber's eyes widened, and she looked me up and down. “Are you sure? She doesn't look like you.”

Emerson Streat chuckled and said, “No, she doesn't. She got her momma's genes. Proof of a benevolent god.”

Amber blinked. She didn't appear to have any understanding of benevolence. Emerson pulled his eyes away from me and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Tell you what, Amber,” he said, pulling some bills out of his pocket. “Why don't you take an early lunch? On me. I'll see you back here at two.”

Amber, who obviously knew a good deal when she saw one, snatched the money out of his hand with her bright red talons and popped up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.

“Thanks, Mr. S.” She tagged me with one last look of caustic disapproval before shooting out the front door and leaving me alone with my father and my dog.

Emerson just stood there watching me for a while, a sad smile on his face. I tightened my grip on Seamus's leash, and I must have been putting out near-hysterical vibes, because the dog moved closer to me and rubbed his big rock of a head against my hip.

“You look beautiful, Josie,” Emerson finally said. “The spittin' image of your momma.”

“The name is Eliot now,” I said. “But you know that.”

He didn't even blink. “Yeah. I know that.”

“You brought Judd out here,” I said, sick with myself at how obvious it all was. How had I not seen it from the start? “How much did you pay him not to say anything to me about it?”

Emerson was quiet for a long time, and I relaxed a bit. He was quick with lies, a little slower when he was telling the truth. “There may have been a small monthly stipend.”

My stomach turned. Judd had lied to me, all this time, for a small monthly stipend. Of course, that wasn't counting the lies he'd told me for free, but that was another issue altogether.

“And you gave him the money for the house.” I stated it as fact, because there was no other way. Judd never had so much as two nickels to rub together. No way had he gotten his hands on one hundred thousand dollars cash, and if he had, he would have blown it in Atlantic City.

Emerson nodded. “Family is allowed to give a one-time gift for that sort of—”

“Did you tell him my real name? Did you tell him I was magic? Did—”

He held up his hands. “I told him I was your birth father, that we'd never met, that your mother had you without telling me. I told him that I just wanted to be sure you were taken care of. I flew him out here for four hours, to sign the paperwork, and that was all he knew. In case of death or divorce, you would get the house.”

“And you expect me to believe that's all there was to it?” I held his eye, refusing to back down, even though my breath was ragged and my muscles were shaking.

Emerson undid his jacket button and sat one hip down on the edge of the reception desk, looking like every hometown politician ad ever made.
Just a good man doing a tough job,
his stance said.

Except I knew better.

“Whatever it is you want,” I said, “you can forget it. I'm leaving town as soon as I can pack up my stuff. You can take that house back and sell it, burn it, give it to your little redheaded wildling, I don't care. But whatever you think is going to happen here, it's not happening.”

He nodded, and hung his head a little bit in an affectation approaching shame. God, he was good. He was so good, he almost had me fooled, and I knew him better than anyone else in this world.

“I don't blame you for being angry,” he said. “All I was hoping for was a chance to see you again, maybe reconnect. Make up for the past. Start fresh.”

“Yeah?” I could hear the squeak in my voice, but I pushed past it. “Then why didn't you just pick up a phone if you knew where I was? Why all the subterfuge, huh?”

He sighed. “Would you have taken a call from me? Would you have let me in if I showed up on your doorstep?”

“What do you think?”

“I think I did what I had to to see my daughter again. Maybe it wasn't the best way to handle it, maybe it was a little manipulative—”

I let out a huff at that. “A
little
manipulative? You bought a house for me without asking me. You paid my husband to
lie
to me.”

“Josie—”

I held up my hand, but before I could correct him, he did it himself.

“Eliot,”
he said, tasting the name, and obviously not liking it. “That's the name your momma wanted to give you when you were born. I told her I wasn't giving my baby girl any man's name.”

“George Eliot wasn't a man,” I said. “She was a female writer who took on a man's name so she could write.”

“Yeah, I know. And Parker for Dorothy Parker.” Emerson gave a little laugh, affection on his face. “She must have had those papers made up for you, just waiting in case I screwed up, and I had no idea. Your momma always was smarter'n me. It's what I loved most about her.”

“She wasn't smart enough to survive being married to you.” I felt a slight tinge of regret as soon as the words were out, because I could see that jab take a chunk out of him. For the all the weaknesses of character my father had, and he'd had a lot, I never doubted that he'd loved my mother, as much as he had the capacity to love anyone.

He gave me a small smile. “How 'bout I just call you ‘punkin'? Like old times.”

“Whatever,” I said, waving a dismissive hand in the air. “What do you want?”

“Can't you believe that I just want a relationship with you? That this is all simply about an old man reconnecting with his only child?”

I took a moment, feeling slightly off balance. Could I believe that?

“Maybe,” I said finally, “but you don't get to decide when or if that happens.
I
do.”

He held up his hands. “Fair enough, fair enough.” He smiled, that same old charming smile that had been the undoing of so many people. “But before you pack up and leave town, let me take you to lunch. There's a waffle house in town, makes the most amazing waffles you've ever had. If I can't convince you to stay, they might.”

He pushed up off the desk and moved toward me. I stepped back, putting Seamus between us. “If you think I'm going to just go to lunch with you—”

“Now
that
is a majestic animal,” Emerson said. He squatted down on his knees to commune with Seamus, and I willed Seamus to snarl, nip at him, or at least let out one of those huffing barks he made when he was hungry, but which sounded a little menacing if you didn't know what it meant. Weren't dogs supposed to have instincts about who was good and who was bad? Apparently Seamus had skipped that gene, because the traitorous little bastard sniffed Emerson Streat's hand and allowed himself to be petted.

“That's right. Good boy.” Emerson pushed up to standing, grunting a little as he did and laughing a bit. “A man my age should know better than to overestimate what his knees'll do for him.”

“You've been spying on me,” I said, trying to get us back on track. This wasn't a friendly visit, and it was important that he understood that. He couldn't use my dog to get back into my heart. I wasn't that easily had.

“Yes,” he said amiably. “Yes, I have.”

“Did you know Judd was cheating on me? How much did you spy on us?”

He held up his hands. “I kept an eye on you, from afar. I wanted to be sure you were safe. I, uh, I found out about Judd and his lady friend. I gave him some time to realize his mistake and come clean to you, and when he didn't, I contacted him and bought the house. I wanted you to have something of your own if the day came when you found out and left him. The agreement was, if you left him, he was to tell you about the house and sign over the deed to you.”