Soulbound: A Lone Star Witch Novel (12 page)

He flushes a little. “Not exactly.”

I back off—I don’t want to interrogate him, or make him feel uncomfortable, but still, I’m fascinated. “But you are in charge of their image? Making them look good?”

“Well, yes, but I’m not the only one. I head up the group of PR people who take care of all manner of publicity for them.”

“I find that so strange.”

“Why?” Now he does look a little offended. “I don’t look like your typical PR guy?”

“No, no, of course you do—”

“Ouch. I think that was an insult.”

He makes a face at me and I laugh. “No, it wasn’t, and you know it. It’s just, I always thought of the ACW as this untouchable group of witches and wizards who don’t actually care what people think of them since they’re appointed to the Council for life. It’s strange to imagine that they actually employ a whole department to make them look good.”

“Yeah, well, their image isn’t exactly Mary Poppins right now. Imagine what it would be like if we didn’t exist?”

It’s a good point, one I’d like to explore more. Donovan is always complaining that the Council has taken a dark turn, that it’s skirting Heka laws for itself even as it enforces them for everyone else. No one around here gets too upset about it though—including me. They’re in Europe, we’re here, and as long as we don’t do anything too heinous, they pretty much leave us alone.

And as I have no power to abuse, anyway, it’s not something I’ve ever spent much time thinking about. But now that I am thinking about it, I’m curious.

“What kind of stuff do you cover up for them?” I ask. “Or is that too off-limits?”

“Well, I can’t give you specifics or anything…”

“Oh, right. Of course not. I was just talking generally.”

“Mostly it’s just things that would make the individual members look bad if they got out—for example, one member of the Council having an affair with a much younger witch even though they’re both married, another one unwittingly invested money backing a Ponzi scheme. Stuff like that.”

“What about things that affect the witch community as a whole? New laws that have passed—”

“That’s not my area. They have a separate department for that.”

I start to ask why that is—after all, how much spin does one group of people need?—when Brandon looks up from his conversation with Lily for the first time since we ordered. “We should probably get going,” he suggests. “The show starts in fifteen minutes.”

I’m a little surprised that so much time has passed. I may not be attracted to Kyle, but he’s a great conversationalist. Once we started talking, I didn’t even feel the time pass.

The theater is only about a half mile walk from the restaurant, and parking down here is a bitch, so we decide to hoof it. But we’re only on the street a few seconds before I start to feel sick. Really sick.

My stomach is churning, my legs feel shaky and I’m having a hard time catching my breath—and this time it has nothing to do with the jeans. Plus I’m breaking out in a cold sweat despite the fact that that temperature has dipped down to the high twenties.

Food poisoning? I wonder. But I didn’t eat any meat or seafood, so that seems unlikely.

The flu? God, I hope not. After taking last week off, I can’t afford to be away from Beanz any more than I have to be.

I keep walking, up Nueces to Sixth Street, but I’m getting shakier by the second. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong. The smell of alcohol and crush of bodies on Austin’s famed party street only makes things worse.

I figure I’m doing a pretty good job of covering because we’re at Guadalupe before Lily notices. She breaks away from Brandon and wraps an arm around my waist. “You doing okay?” she murmurs.

I force a smile I’m far from feeling. “Something at dinner must not have agreed with me.”

“Do you want to go home?”

The offer’s sincere—she’s that kind of friend—but I know she’ll be crushed if I end the date early, so I just shake my head. “I’ll be fine once we get inside and I can sit down.”

“You sure?”

No. Not at all. “Yeah, absolutely.”

By the time we make a left onto Congress, the nausea has died down a little, but the shakiness is worse. My legs feel like they can’t support me and suddenly, the Jimmy Choos don’t seem like such a good idea. Not that there’s
anything I can do about it now—Lily’s shoes are even higher and more precarious than mine.

We stop outside the Paramount and Brandon and Kyle walk up to will call to get our tickets. Normally, I love this place. It’s an old-time movie palace in the tradition of Hollywood’s Golden Era. One big theater with sweeping arches, rounded ceilings and elaborate gold paint, it’s one of the most popular places to perform in Austin. When they don’t have comedians or musicians booked into it, they have movie marathons that run the gamut from B movie thrillers to Golden Era romances like
Casablanca
and
Gone with the Wind
.

I can’t begin to list the number of happy times I’ve had here, curled up in the huge, red seats drinking beer and eating popcorn while B movie villains plotted to take over the world. But today I don’t want to go in. A feeling of dread overwhelmed me the second we stopped in front of the box office and it’s only grown worse the longer we stand here.

Brandon and Kyle still have a few people in front of them at the window when I glance up at the marquee to check who we’re seeing. I’m not a big fan of illusionists, but there are a few I wouldn’t mind…

The world stops. Literally stops. Or at least my small section of it does, my entire being freezing where I stand. Except my heart—that starts pounding so fast that for a moment I fear it will explode right out of my chest.

He’s here. Right here. In Austin. Even though he’s supposed to be eight thousand miles and half a world away. Not that I’ve been keeping track or anything.

I look again, just to make sure. Just to be certain. And there it is in huge black letters that can’t be ignored. T
HE
W
ORLD
F
AMOUS
D
ECLAN
C
HUMOMISTO, IN TOWN FOR THREE NIGHTS ONLY
. M
AGICAL
E
NCORE TO THE
D
ARK
I
LLUSIONS
W
ORLD
T
OUR
.

T
he sick feeling I’ve been having for the past ten minutes intensifies into a full-blown panic attack and suddenly it’s not just about being unable to take a deep breath. It’s about not being able to breathe at all. I turn away from the theater so I won’t have to see his name and noisily try to suck air into a windpipe that has narrowed to the size of a pinhole.

He can’t be here. He just…can’t be here. Not here, in Austin, where I am. Not when I need him to be anywhere but here.

“Hey, Xandra, are you getting worse?” Lily’s moved so that she’s right in front of me, her concerned face inches from mine. “You look like you’re going to throw up.”

I feel like I’m going to throw up. The nausea from earlier is back triple-fold and all the weird feelings, the not-quite-feeling-like-myself awkwardness oozes through me. I glance back at the marquee, one more time—just to prove to myself that I’m not imagining this. Imagining him.

I’m not. Lily is waiting for an answer, the look on her face both impatient and concerned. I want to point, to show her what it is that has me so uneasy, but she doesn’t know. I never told her about my one night with Declan. I probably should have, but as a princess of Ipswitch, so much of my life is for public consumption that it felt
good to have this one little secret. This one thing that no one else knows about. Even if it ended up not meaning anything—to him anyway. As for me, it was the final proof that I’d never fit into the life my coven expected me to lead. Which is a good thing—I should be shaking his hand for the lesson instead of feeling like I’m about to shake apart.

The thought steadies me and I finally suck in one breath, two. I can do this, I tell myself. Seeing Declan again is nothing. I’m part of the audience in a sold-out show—he’ll never know I’m here. Not that he probably remembers me anyway, but still. It’s not as if I have to worry about running into him in the lobby.

My throat relaxes a little more and slowly, surely, my breathing returns to normal. As it does, the nausea subsides. I don’t feel normal yet—there’s still a strange uneasiness inside me, like my body knows there’s something wrong but it just can’t quite figure out what it is.

Part of me wants to plead sickness, to just go home, but I know Lily will insist on coming with me and I don’t want to ruin her night. Or Kyle and Brandon’s, especially now that I know we’re seeing Declan’s show. He’s world famous, the best illusionist in the business (because he actually possesses magic, I’m sure) and I know tickets for his shows regularly go for upward of two hundred dollars. If I insist on walking away, Kyle and Brandon will be out close to a thousand dollars and weird, churning sickness in my stomach or not, I can’t bring myself to do that to them.

“I’ll be fine once we get in there and sit down,” I tell Lily. “I’m just a little dizzy. I probably shouldn’t have had that third glass of wine.”

She doesn’t look convinced, but the guys choose that minute to come up to us, and faced with a grinning Brandon, Lily chooses to let the subject drop. Which is exactly what I was counting on.

It’ll be fine, I assure myself as we walk through the lobby. I’ll go in there, find a way to sit through the next two hours and then get Kyle and Brandon to take me home. No harm, no foul. Lily will have gotten her uninterrupted first date and no one will ever know about those stolen moments with Declan.

It’s a good plan and it should have worked. But the longer we sit waiting for Declan to come onstage, the worse the uneasiness gets until I can’t even sit still. An electric current is working its way through me, and my body is no longer under my control as it shakes and twitches.

There’s a low-grade itchiness right below my skin that I have no hope of scratching and it’s getting worse every second, until I’m so miserable that I want to die. Even worse, I’m afraid of these sensations. Surely seeing Declan again isn’t enough to do this to me? Something else must be wrong, but I have no idea what it is. I know only that I need it to stop.

In desperation, I focus on the elaborate angel painted above the stage. Done in shades of gold and pink and ivory, she’s ornate and beautiful and completely over the top. She’s also perfect for this place that is both too much and just enough.

The shaking gets worse and I concentrate on counting every curl on her head. It calms me down, makes it easier to breathe—at least until the lights go out.

There’s a collective gasp from the audience and Lily reaches over and squeezes my hand. I don’t blame them—everyone here is thrilled at the chance to see Declan. His world tour had sold out in every venue, no matter how big (again, not like I’m keeping track), and was supposed to have wound up two weeks ago at Madison Square Garden. I’m not sure why he’s here in Austin now, let alone performing at the Paramount instead of at the UT center, which is so much bigger. Not that it really
matters. He’s here for three days and then he’s gone and I’ll never have to see him again.

The music starts, low and eerie and a little mystical, and all around me I can feel people shifting in anticipation. A spotlight illuminates center stage, where a wisp of smoke winds its way across the open expanse. It’s soon joined by another curl, then another and another and another.

I can feel its power calling to a place deep inside of me—this is elemental fire magic at its most basic, though I’m sure most of the audience believes it’s just the clever use of a smoke machine. As I watch the stage slowly fill, the itchiness inside me eases just a little. I breathe a sigh of relief, until I realize it’s been replaced by a low-grade hum—a vibration—that has taken over every cell in my body.

I shift a little, lean forward, until I realize that—like everyone else in the theater—I’m on the edge of my seat, waiting for Declan’s entrance.

I immediately sit back, feeling like an idiot, but it doesn’t really matter. The theater itself seems to be holding its breath as everyone looks around, trying to figure out where Declan will come from. The reviews of the show say he bursts from a new place every time and I brace myself for my first glimpse of him.

But no amount of preparation could have readied me for what happens next. With a crash of music and a flash of lights, the smoke on the stage—not thick, not condensed, still just wispy tendrils of gray—seems to explode and Declan is standing center stage, dressed in black pants and a simple, V-neck black sweater.

I try to wrap my mind around what I just saw. Had he really turned himself into smoke and then, in the blink of an eye, turned back to human form? It’s impossible magic, takes immeasurable power and skill to do such a thing and I can’t imagine how he did it. Beside me, Lily,
Brandon and Kyle all look at each other and I know, they too, are wondering if we really just saw what we thought we did.

The rumors in the Hekan community about his power deteriorating are obviously no more true now than they were eight years ago.

He doesn’t speak, doesn’t bow, barely acknowledges the audience’s wild applause at all. Instead, he moves seamlessly into his next “illusion,” a demonstration that has him levitating twelve feet above the ground. Arms lifted above his head, he starts to spin faster and faster until he bursts into flames.

He burns and burns and burns, until gasps of surprise become cries of dismay and the audience begins to glance uneasily at one another. Even knowing it’s magic not illusion, even knowing how talented he is, I start to get nervous too. Especially when I notice a few stagehands stepping forward, fire extinguishers in hand and looks of fear on their faces.

Has something gone wrong? Is he burning too long? My stomach clenches and the strange vibration inside of me becomes something more, something all-encompassing. A fire of my own, licking along my nerve endings and burning me to a crisp from the inside out.