Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance (49 page)

“Quite the turnout,” Hudson said, looping an arm around me from behind and handing me a glass of champagne. He looked positively edible in tan slacks and a fitted white linen shirt. I ran my hand up his chest, savoring the heat of him against my palm.

His divination—fluffy clouds drifting past his shoulders—complemented his attire. The clouds were the only apparition around him tonight, for which I was profoundly grateful. Although it had been almost a month, I still broke out in a sweat when I recalled the visual onslaught of the night of my rescue. It had taken three days for my gift to drain the well my curse had filled. I’d spent those days holed up in my loft with Hudson, repairing the damage to my apartment and my psyche and letting my body heal. Hudson had been a tremendous help on all accounts, especially with the long soaks in my oversize oval tub.

“Eva, darling! Isn’t this wonderful?” Gabriel Galileo swept through the crush of people and snatched up my hand to kiss it. The gallery owner’s long dark hair was slicked back in a low ponytail, and his outfit tonight was just shy of a tuxedo. His romantic Spanish-pirate good looks were flushed with a proprietor’s pride and pleasure. He pulled me close to half whisper, “I have
the
artist of the season, and the timing couldn’t be better. My archnemesis just arrived. Eat your heart out, Ian Smithson!”

The last was said loud enough to draw a few glances, and Gabriel twisted to put his back to his unintended audience. He made a moue, winked, and threw his head back in laughter.

“I’m glad it all worked out,” I said, smiling.

“And thanks to Mr. Keyes here, the gallery’s safety rating is better than the Louvre’s. No one’s getting in without authorization.” He leaned close. “More’s the pity. Your aunt’s work being stolen was the best thing that’s happened to Galileo Gallery. Or, at least, them being stolen, then returned.”

“I believe Sofie feels the same,” Hudson said dryly.

“Yes, she’s been
such
a dear through this whole ordeal.
Such
a dear. I couldn’t have pulled this off without her wholehearted commitment.” His effusive gesture caught a nearby patron’s attention, and Gabriel rushed off to greet him.

“
Such
a dear,” Hudson said, and we both laughed. Sofie had all but organized this show herself, delighted to capitalize on her moment in the spotlight.

I’d been trying to congratulate my aunt on her success for the last forty-five minutes, but every time I spotted her, the crowd swallowed her up before I got close. I finally gave up and wound through the throngs to the catered buffet.

Edmond was impossible to miss. He towered over the food table, encased in a brilliant canary-yellow chef’s jacket with a matching French cap perched on his bald head. For those of us who could see apparitions, he also wore a chain necklace of miniature cupcakes with rainbow sprinkles on yellow frosting, and a giant cream puff dangled from the center of the necklace.

The table practically groaned under a smorgasbord of sweets—bite-size pieces of brownies and fudge and cakes and pies, miniature fruit tarts, finger-size éclairs, and the pièce de résistance, tiny triangles of coffee cake.

“This looks amazing, Edmond,” I said, selecting a coffee cake bite and popping it in my mouth. Brown sugar melted on my tongue, and I closed my eyes in delight.

“So do you, Eva,” Edmond said. My eyes snapped open. “I mean, uh, you look very nice, uh, in that dress. Um. Eye-catching.” Edmond plucked at the front of his coat, his eyes darting.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Hudson said.

I blushed at the suggestive look in his eyes, my blush spreading as I recalled the memorable way Hudson had greeted me in my apartment. Luckily the skirt on the blue sheath dress didn’t wrinkle, and Hudson was right: my hair looked better down than it had up.

Hudson shook Edmond’s hand. “Great spread. You guys outdid yourselves.”

“Ms. Sterling was very understanding about—” He gestured vaguely toward the returned paintings. “This was the least we could do. And now she’s going to think I’m using her, because I’ve already booked two other events. People apparently like my food.” He said the last with awe and pride.

“Don’t feel guilty,” I said. “I think Sofie knew exactly what would happen when she accepted your offer to cater.” I grabbed two more pieces of coffee cake and slid out of the way of the people waiting behind me.

“Atlas is working the drinks,” Hudson said. “And the crowd.” I glanced in the direction he indicated, easily spotting Atlas dressed all in white. An enormous gold star hung from his neck with his name printed in diamonds—an apparition only slightly less modest than the sun-bright halo shining a spotlight above him. He flirted with the women in his line and made small talk with the men, exuding the charm of a movie star. His headshot and details were in a framed stand at the side of the table, just in case an agent attended the reception. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see him in something soon,” Hudson said.

“If
you
see him in something,” I corrected.

“Speaking of which, we should find your aunt and get out of here soon, right?”

“Yeah. We’ve got another twenty minutes tops before . . .”

“Things start to fuss?”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.” I smiled up at Hudson. After a month of dating, Hudson was starting to understand the limitations of my curse better, and he showed no signs of being scared off by it, either. The novelty of his acceptance was an ever-present aphrodisiac.

“Hmm, I know what that look means,” Hudson said. His eyes traveled down my body, and my skin tingled with anticipation. Abruptly, he rose to his tiptoes and gawked about the room. “Your aunt had better not be hiding on purpose. Aha!” He grabbed my hand and pushed into the crowd.

“Hey, where’s the fire?!”

“Oh, excuse me. I didn’t see—”

“The person you were trampling?” Dempsey planted her hands on her hips, but she was grinning. “What’s up, hot stuff?” I squeezed in beside Hudson, and Dempsey gave me a once-over. “Whoo-ee, girl, where’s an extinguisher when you need it? No wonder this lummox is trampling everything in sight.”

“You look ravishing, Dempsey,” I said. Her red-carpet-ready gown was shiny gold, molded to every curve, and slit to her thigh. She’d styled her blond hair in thick waves around her face, and there was nothing clownlike about her makeup.

“That’s the point. I’m meeting a jockey who needs riding lessons, if you know what I mean.” She waggled her eyebrows at me. “Now, where’s the food? Trying to navigate in here is like hiking a forest where the trees keep moving. I can’t find shit, and my sense of direction died with the feeling in my toes.”

“You’re close,” Hudson said. “Can you see the S-curve of track lighting over there?” He pointed to the ceiling.

“Roger that.”

“The food’s just beyond.”

“You’re a good man, Hudson. Now find that fire extinguisher before Eva burns this place down.” She smacked his ass and pushed through a cluster of people, shouting, “Make way for the lady!”

Hudson rubbed his butt cheek and stared after her.

“Did the wee woman hurt you?” I asked. “Maybe I should kiss it and make it better.”

“Deal.” Hudson grabbed my hand again and tugged me through two claustrophobic rooms to the last room in the gallery, where the crush of people thinned, and finally, I found my aunt.

“Eva!” She excused herself from the trio of men she’d been chatting with and bounced to my side, greeting me as if she hadn’t seen me just six hours earlier when we’d performed the final walk-through before the opening. “Isn’t this wonderful?”

“It’s amazing,” I agreed. Paintbrushes danced around her feet and thornless flowering rose vines twined up her arms, but the rose-tipped wand in her hand made me nervous. The rest of the apparitions reflected Sofie’s overflowing happiness, and the best part was the lack of any hint of a blindfold. Sofie had recovered from her time with the ninjas with her usual grace.

“Tell me, honestly, what do you think of my latest pieces?” Sofie asked after she greeted Hudson.

We all turned to the far wall. Sofie had painted a series of small canvases with colorful, whimsical elephants playing with golden Labradors. In the large, central piece, an elephant, a leopard-printed wolf, and a silver Scottish terrier ran side by side through downtown LA. All three animals were the same height, and the elephant wore bracelets shaped in the infinity sign. The rest of the painting—more animals in a fantastical cityscape—were muted.

To those ungifted with apparitions, all the elephant—elephantini—pictures were a break from Sofie’s style, but I knew better. Sofie painted what she saw in her divinations, blending her visions with reality. When I looked at the main painting, I saw Kyoko, myself, and Hudson fleeing through the streets of LA. The pink, green, and blue tigers behind us were the ninjas. The yellow hummingbird and magpie were Edmond and Atlas; the red-backed badger was Dempsey. The window display of a pyramid of babies—these ones clothed and happy and standing on each other’s shoulders like cheerleaders—was Jenny. The painting was lighthearted to anyone who didn’t know what the symbols represented.

“I like that one.” I pointed to a smaller painting of Kyoko spraying Dali with a fountain of water.

Hudson narrowed his eyes at the largest painting. “I can’t put my finger on it, but this one makes me . . . well, it makes me tense. I prefer that one.” He pointed to a smaller painting of Kyoko and Dali sunbathing. Sofie and I shared a smile.

“That one’s my favorite,” Sofie said, pointing to a smaller piece of a red-backed badger in a magician’s garb, a huge grin lighting up its face as it gestured to a closed curtain behind it. “I knew I needed to get some of that amazing experience—the fun parts—on canvas, but it was until I sketched this piece that I was inspired to paint the rest. I thought of it the day Dempsey told us her big news.”

That day had been the highlight of an otherwise stellar month. Hudson had returned home from work, saying a text Dempsey had sent him, Atlas, Edmond, and Sofie had turned into an impromptu dinner party at Sofie’s that night.

“What was the text?” I’d asked.

“‘Success.’ With about twenty exclamation points.”

Confused and curious, we’d arrived at Sofie’s to find our partners in crime already gathered and Sofie in tears on the porch.

“She’s alive,” Sofie had said, lifting sparkling eyes to mine as I rushed to her side. “Kyoko’s alive!”

“How?”

The how took longer to figure out, and we pieced it together over dinner.

Jenny had remained one step ahead of everyone all along, even the retrievalist. Her years as a spy and her paranoia proved invaluable, even if she did get carried away in the execution of her secretive plans. Only Edmond believed that Jenny orchestrated
everything
. The rest of us agreed she couldn’t have planned to have Kyoko stolen or my aunt kidnapped, but she used both to her advantage. Whatever Jenny’s original plans were, we knew from Atlas that she set things in motion when she left my mother’s house on that horrible day when Sofie was abducted.

“I didn’t know what she was doing, but she had me follow her to her hidey-hole, then to a shipping company,” Atlas said around a mouthful of lasagna. He washed it down with a gulp of wine, then continued. “I figured she had some secret file she was mailing somewhere for insurance. You know, like you see in movies.”

In a way, it had been. One of the packages arrived at Edmond and Atlas’s apartment the next morning. It contained two Evolution Solutions uniforms and the keys to a company van, along with instructions to stick to Hudson once I’d been kidnapped.

“What!” Sofie, Hudson, and I shouted at the same time.

“I’m just the messenger,” Atlas said, hand raised in defense. “Jenny said she was going to have the ninjas do it, but I don’t think she had a chance.”

“Who thinks like that?” Hudson asked, his voice a sliver above a growl. “Where does she get off using Eva like that?”

I remembered Jenny telling the scientists in the shipping container lab that I was essential to her success. She’d probably planned to tell the ninjas the same thing, too, and they would have been my kidnappers rather than the retrievalist. It probably would have been easier to escape from the ninjas than it had been from the retrievalist, too. Either way, the only reason I’d ended up in that nightmare had been because of Jenny’s say-so.

“Why?” I asked, trying to keep the quaver from my voice. I’d yet to get a full night’s sleep, with every ambient sound in my loft waking me in cold sweats, and I still had to sleep with the light on. I set my utensils down on my plate, and Sofie took my hand, running her thumb soothingly across my knuckles.

“She said it would increase her odds of being rescued,” Atlas said. He took in our expressions and shook his head. “Look, it wasn’t my idea. I’m just telling you what she told me before she handed herself over the ninjas. Anyway, this next bit is funny, I promise. So Jenny had me drive her to the park rather than take her own car. There I am driving on the freeway, and she pulls her pants down!”

“Did she pee her pants?” Dempsey asked. “It happens, you know, when people get scared.”

“No. Gross! She had two vials and a needle, and she taped them on her thigh, almost against her, you know, her
down there
. If it’d been anyone but Jenny, I would have thought it was drugs. Or, well, you know,
recreational
drugs.”