Magic and the Modern Girl (29 page)

“Excellent!” I said, my voice so falsely hearty that even Gran gave me an odd look. “No! Really! You created the potion perfectly!” I forced myself to stop exclaiming, ordered myself to gaze reassuringly at my four preening students. From the corner of my eye, I could see Neko’s frankly curious look. I babbled on, trying to smooth over my aching lack of powers with idiotic words. “I could definitely feel it, feel the force that you created. It didn’t add to my power, but I could sense what was happening. I’ll be back to full strength in no time, if we keep training like this.”

Gran beamed at me as she patted Nuri’s arm. “We’re certainly glad to hear that, dear.” Her words, though, were almost lost in a yawn. “Excuse me! I didn’t realize how tired that would make me!”

David glided forward, settling a steady hand over Gran’s. I knew the look on his face; he was reading her status, measuring her fitness. He’d touched me often enough with the same dispassionate care. I wasn’t surprised to hear him pronounce, “You should eat something. We all should.”

“Pizza’s on me!” I said, masking my concern with false good cheer. My pocketbook might not approve of the lessons I was teaching Gran and Clara, but I had to soldier on. I couldn’t think of any alternatives, at this point.

“Double anchovies!” Neko announced immediately.

“Green peppers and black olives,” Clara said. Apparently, she was back to dabbling with vegetarianism, at least for the night. Must be preparing for life near the Vortex.

“Pepperoni, sausage and hamburger,” Gran said contentedly.

I headed into the kitchen for a pad of paper, using the errand to compose myself. I hadn’t expected my magical loss to hurt quite so badly. I hadn’t expected to miss my powers nearly as much as I did.

It took almost a quarter of an hour to work out our order, dividing three medium pies in halves to capture everyone’s preferences. Nuri called dibs on any extra crusts. Between cleaning up from our training session and converting the kitchen counter into a buffet, the rest of the evening flew by. I had one shaky moment when Neko questioned the broad variety of Will-provided fruit juices in my refrigerator, but I managed to convince him that I had bought them for Majom and Nuri, not knowing the other familiars’ tastes in food and beverage.

It was after ten o’clock when Clara finally rattled her keys. “We should get out of here, Jeanette. Let you get your rest. Besides, I have some packing to do.”

I stifled a yawn against the back of my teeth. I had been fading for the past hour, but I wasn’t about to get into a conversation about
why
I was so tired, especially since I couldn’t blame my fatigue on actually working any magic. I pasted on a smile and said, “We’ll have to find another time to work together soon.”

“Yes, dear,” Gran agreed, as she got to her feet with Nuri’s assistance.

By then, Majom was plucking at Clara’s sleeve, pulling her close to whisper some secret in her ear. Nuri yawned, stretching her arms so wide I was afraid that she was going to knock Gran over. Neko cast an appraising eye at his fellow familiars. “Can I squeeze in with the four of you for a ride home?”

“Neko,” I said. “Stay and help clean up.”

“Love to, but I can’t. Jacques is waiting for me.” He paused, as if giving me a chance to say something, but I was stuck coming up with an argument. “At home,” he elaborated. I still couldn’t figure out a proper justification. “In bed.” He favored me with an enormous wink. “I’m sure you understand.”

“Get out of here, you!” I shoved at him before he could say something even more inappropriate in front of my octogenarian grandmother.

Only after the door closed did I realize that I’d left myself with another, more substantial problem. David was picking up plates and carrying them into the kitchen. “Oh, leave those,” I said. “I’ll take care of them.” He shrugged and ignored me.

I turned on the faucet in the sink, increasing the flow as high as it would go. I tried to tell myself that I needed it to heat up quickly, so that I could wash the dishes properly. I wouldn’t waste water just to drown out a possibly uncomfortable conversation.

Idiot me, I hadn’t counted on David’s patience. He let us wash the dishes in silence. He let us rinse the glasses. He let us dry everything and return every one of my possessions to its proper cupboard. He closed pizza boxes and stacked them neatly beside the trash can, an unspoken promise to carry them out to the Dumpster behind the library later.

He only spoke when I was folding the terry hand towel into perfect thirds over the drying rack. “The light spell worked on Friday night, even if the potion didn’t tonight?”

“I’m allowed to work a light spell. Any witch can!”

“I didn’t say otherwise, Jane.”

“But you thought it. You thought it very loudly.” I flounced into the living room, moving with all the exasperation of an insulted teenaged girl. I threw myself onto one of the couches.

David sat beside me, leaving a full cushion between us. “I’m worried that you’ve spent the last of your powers. That’s dangerous. Someone could claim Neko. Could claim me. Mabon is eight days away.”

“I don’t think we’re getting Ariel back on Mabon,” I said. “And you don’t have to be so noble and subtle. I know that you’re telling me we wouldn’t have to worry about any of this, if I’d just been more responsible in the first place. I know what you’re thinking.”

“Actually,” he said, and his voice was so even that I actually hated him for a moment. “You don’t.”

I stared at him. I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. I wanted to tell him that I knew every thought that had ever crossed his mind, that I could tell him exactly what he’d meant to say. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t lie to him outright. Unbidden, tears pricked at the back of my eyes. A sob caught in my throat.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I started to count out the answers. I was going to be dressed in hideous orange and silver at my grandmother’s wedding. The mother I’d only found two years before was getting ready to abandon me, again. My job was going nowhere in a hurry. I wasn’t sure where my boyfriend was, or even if I could call him a boyfriend. The ridiculously self-named Artistic Avenger was still at large, while I was not a single step closer to raising enough power to bring her in, to salvaging a spell that I had screwed up because I’d been thinking about my warder, thinking about a relationship that was obviously never, ever going to happen. Mabon was eight days away.

David sat on the far side of my living-room couch, holding every muscle still, as if I had miraculously worked some spell to cast him in stone.

I pulled my knees up to my chest, tucking my fingers into the sleeves of my turtleneck sweater. “I don’t know,” I said, and my voice was very small.

“Start at the beginning,” David said reasonably.

I only shook my head. I wasn’t even sure where the beginning was anymore.

“You’re tired, Jane.” There was no judgment in the words, only a statement. “You need some sleep.”

I swiped at my eyes and nodded. “It’s been a long day,” I said, but that only made me want to laugh crazily. I sniffed, instead.

Another night, David would have walked me to my bedroom. (The room that Will had entered for the first time Friday night.) He would have tucked me into my bed. (The bed that Will had pounced on Friday night.) He would have lain beside me, head on my extra pillow. (The pillow that Will had slept on Friday night.)

He would have left before dawn.

I clambered to my feet and crossed to the front door. “Good night,” I said.

David was no fool. He knew when he was being dismissed. He’d done the dismissing well enough in his own right. “Good night,” he said, matching my even tone perfectly. “Lock the door behind me.”

“Of course,” I said, not even bothering to roll my eyes.

And I did.

I locked the door so that I was safe in my living room. Alone. And I went into my bedroom. Alone. And I climbed into my bed. Alone. And I fell asleep.

Alone.

15

I
was trapped on a kitchen step stool, penned in by a madman with a pincushion and a measuring tape.

“Girlfriend, if you’re not going to stand up straight, I can’t be responsible for how you look at the wedding.” Neko clicked his tongue in exasperation.

I sighed and leaned toward the counter, snagging another one of Melissa’s Honey Moons, specially baked for my fitting. Nuri had already eaten half a dozen, retreating to a chair in the corner of Gran’s small kitchen after seizing each golden cookie. Deciding not to press the shy redheaded woman into doing my dirty work, I begged Melissa, “Please, please,
please
will you give me one of those mojitos?”

Mojito therapy had taken over Gran’s kitchen—lime, mint, rum and seltzer were arrayed across the counter. So far, our strategy was a success, even if my dress was still hideous.

Gran lifted her own glass, where mint leaves floated amid the light-green alcohol-infused soda. “These are really quite good, dear. You should have told me about them a long time ago. We should serve them at the reception.”

“Absolutely, Gran,” I grumbled, scarcely managing to banish leftover teenaged angst from my reply. Mojitos at my grandmother’s reception. What would she come up with next? Why didn’t we just invite Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and any other unemployed starlets who happened to be free on Halloween, to guarantee that we had the jet-set party of the century? What had happened to my grandmother, to the totally normal woman who had raised me, to her endless reams of common sense and good taste?

I looked down at the orange-and-silver taffeta of my dress, thinking that I’d be willing to let common sense go forever, if I could only get back a hint of good taste.

“Stand straight!” Neko hissed.

Melissa passed a glass to me as I attempted to oblige. I could just catch a glimpse of myself in the foyer mirror. The dress sagged across my front, clearly cut for a woman with more cleavage than I had to brag about. The waist nipped in dangerously, gathered together with an attached sash that sparkled in silver lamé. As Neko muttered through his mouthful of straight pins, I took miniature steps in a circle, turning on the step stool so that he could perfect the hem. I winced when I glimpsed the back of the dress over my shoulder. Its halter neckline left a huge expanse of flesh bare, a stretch of skin that was only broadened by the gigantic silver bow that emphasized what the designer would certainly have called my “derriere.”

I could not believe that any designer had ever made such a horrific creation, much less that my grandmother had seen it in a magazine. It was just my luck that Neko’s Jacques knew someone in the design house, someone who’d been able to finagle an orange one on such short notice.

Orange. Gran had not been kidding. The dress rivaled Gatorade in its coloring. I sighed. I only drank Gatorade when I was suffering from a deadly flu.

I swallowed half of my mojito in a single swig.

“There,” Melissa said, clearly smothering a laugh. “It looks much better, with those darts taken in.”

“Much better,” Neko agreed. He was getting his revenge for all the arcane study I’d forced him to complete in the past two years, for all the times I’d awakened him to help me with a spell. “You’re lucky I can handle the sewing.”

Gran beamed.

Well, that was really the most important thing, wasn’t it? That Gran was beaming? I might think that she had turned into a monster planning this wedding. I might think that I was caught in the midst of a campy sitcom from hell. I might think that Gran had gone wholly and completely around the bend. But my grandmother—the woman who had raised me, the woman who had nurtured me through my own tempestuous teens—was happy.

“What do you think, Neko dear? The shoes will be dyed to match the dress, of course, but maybe we could attach some silver bows to them? You know, to pull it all together?”

“Absolutely, Gran,” my traitorous familiar said. “Silver bows for the shoes would be perfect.”

I hated both of them.

Melissa lifted the mojito pitcher even before I asked for a refill. Then she turned back to my grandmother. “So, Mrs. Smythe? What have you decided about the cake?” Melissa had brought along a dozen samples.

“I can’t make up my mind. White cake seems so…plain, even though yours tastes divine, dear. But we really don’t want to step too far away from tradition, do we?”

I almost choked as Melissa rotated her serving plate. Orange and silver was hardly the headline color combination in
Letitia Baldrige’s Guide to Weddings
. Melissa merely said, “Why don’t you try the lemon again? We could do it in three layers, with a coat of marzipan over everything. That way, we could color the outside orange. And decorate it with silver dragées.”

If looks could kill, Cake Walk’s doors would never open again. I was surprised to realize that even Neko’s considerably distant limits had been reached. “Buttercream would be better,” he insisted, intent enough on conveying his message that he extracted the pins from his mouth.

“I’m just not sure,” Gran fretted.

“Not marzipan,” I said firmly. “The almond would taste terrible with lemon cake.”

“Now, dear, you’ve never liked almond. It’s all a matter of taste.”

I stared down at my hideous dress and bit back a reply.

I liked almonds just fine—Melissa’s Almond Lust and Lust After Dark were two of my favorite confections. But marzipan was disgusting.

Melissa laughed and said, “We have a little time left. I’ll leave these samples here. You can try them again in the morning, when you’re drinking a cup of coffee. They’ll seem different, with the bitter, instead of with mojito.”

“Thank you, dear. I don’t mind if I do have a bit more of that drink. Jane, why haven’t you made these for me before?”

As Melissa topped off my grandmother’s glass I just shook my head. She was going to be totally plastered by the time we were done. I glared at Neko. “Aren’t you through yet?”

“Temper, temper,” he said, placing one last pin. “There. Now go take it off and be very careful that you don’t jostle the pins.”