Barely Bewitched (12 page)

Chapter 17

When I got home, I went to Abby’s, hoping to talk to her, but she was over at a friend’s house for dinner and to play dolls. So I went to work on cleaning my car. Thankfully, I didn’t find any murdered bunnies.

I used a blanket as a makeshift seat cover, then I went to the grocery store to pick up a bunch of ingredients, and called Mr. Jenson to tell him I’d be over. I wasn’t supposed to go to Bryn’s house according to the Conclave, so I should’ve been more sneaky about it, but I wasn’t lugging all those bags through Riverside Park to the paddleboats. Plus, to hell with the Conclave.

I buzzed the security intercom and talked to Steve’s unfriendly counterpart, who’d never told me his name. What he did say was that I was supposed to confine myself to the kitchen or he’d personally toss me off the property.

If Mr. Jenson hadn’t been waiting, I would have turned around and gone home. Instead, I took the back drive and stood under the tan awning until he opened the door and welcomed me inside.

Mr. Jenson’s wrinkles have wrinkles, but they’re all very dignified. I washed my hands and arranged my supplies. He insisted on helping me, though I didn’t need it. To be friendly, I let him wash the fruit and shell the pistachios.

“You’ve been with Mr. Lyons a long time?”

“Since he was a boy.”

“Did he tell you we had a fight?”

“I don’t recall him mentioning it.”

I smiled. “No, you wouldn’t when you’re talking to me.” I opened the cupboards to get the lay of the land and to get out the equipment I wanted. Everything was top-of-the-line and like new. “Still, I bet if you tried to remember, you might. He probably said a few choice words.”

Mr. Jenson moved the black marble pastry board aside so I could plug in the mixer.

“We used to see quite a bit of Mr. Lyons’s Irish temper, but it’s been some years ago now. It was at its worst when he began boarding school in England. He often engaged in what the lads referred to as ‘scrapping.’ But then one year, he came home from a holiday in Dublin and we found him quite changed. I commented over the Christmas break that we had received no notices of disciplinary action for fighting or other acts of frank rebellion. I said I presumed that things were going well in the current school term. He said, ‘There’s no advantage to losing control, Jenson. In fact, there’s a definite disadvantage to it.’ ”

“How old was he?”

“Eleven.”

“What was he like before then?”

“A prankster with quite the ability to charm any member of the household staff into turning a blind eye to his antics. Had his upbringing been left entirely in my wife’s hands, he should have run wild and then become a film star or a drunkard. She was herself Irish and extremely fond of him. She never forgave Master Lennox for sending him away to school.”

“Well, didn’t she change her mind when she saw how he turned out? Yale law school and all that?” I mixed cocoa and flour and added a teaspoon of baking soda.

“He was still in law school when we lost her, but he did make her quite happy in the end.”

I whisked some egg whites and started melting the chocolate. It smelled delectable, and I was happier than a kid with a gift card for a new video game. This might not have been my house, but the kitchen was my domain, where I didn’t have to think about earth, wind, water, and fire for magic spells. I could think sweet, spicy, savory, and pungent. Those were my elements.

“How did Bryn make her happy? I bet he made good grades.”

“He was always an excellent student, but his marks meant very little to her. Those last six months, he flew home every weekend. When she was very weak, he had tea in her room and read her Irish stories and poems, resurrecting his boyhood accent, giving her a piece of Ireland here in the middle of—” Mr. Jenson waved a hand. “Well, not her home certainly.”

I stirred the chocolate, then dipped my finger in for a taste. Dark and sweet, just the way I liked it.

“He wouldn’t hear any praise for doing it, but it’s quite something for a clever young man to abandon his school chums and the fun to be had with them in order to be shut up in a sickroom with an old woman.”

I digested that for a minute. It hit home somewhere in the vicinity of my heart, just like Mr. Jenson meant it to. “I bet it surprised Lennox. He can’t have raised Bryn to think much about taking care of other people.”

“You are most perceptive, Miss Tamara.” Mr. Jenson poured me a glass of water from a crystal pitcher and set it near my hand. “But the younger Mr. Lyons has always been his own man.”

I took a sip of water, then folded the liquid chocolate into the fluffy egg whites. “Well, I’ll try to do right by him with this,” I said, waving my hand over the counter.

“Yes, I’m certain you will.”

I worked for several hours more. When Bryn got home from his office, Mr. Jenson took him his dinner in the dining room, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether he’d even been told I was there. I kept working and tried not to think about him and how much I wanted to see him.

“I said I’ll take it,” Bryn’s voice said, just before the kitchen door swung open. He had a dinner dish in his hand that he was apparently determined to dispose of himself. He stopped just inside, surveyed things, then turned and looked pointedly at Mr. Jenson. “Care to explain this?”

I tensed. He was still very mad at me. He dropped the china plate in the sink, and it clattered, making me wince. I was surprised it didn’t break.

“The menu is my responsibility,” Mr. Jenson said calmly. “I have always had leave to hire the most exceptional culinary talent, sparing no expense by your own instructions. Am I now to be undermined in my efforts?”

“Did you really believe that you could have her in my house without me realizing it?”

“You had no cause to enter the kitchen. Mrs. Freet would have cleared the dining table, per our usual routine.”

“Winley had to cooperate for her to get past the gate.”

“Clearly. If it is your intent to release him from service, I shall tender my resignation as well. It was my affair.”

There was the briefest hesitation on Bryn’s part before he answered. “Fine. Despite this ‘affair,’ as you call it, I’ll be happy to give you a reference for your next position.”

I gasped.

“I shall not need it. I will, of course, retire. I intend to travel. I should very much like to see the Grand Canyon, and perhaps Las Vegas.” He gave a slight bow before he left the kitchen.

I frowned at Bryn. “Mr. Jenson’s too old for Las Vegas. Not that I’ve been there, but even their commercials could shock a senior citizen into a heart attack.”

“What are you doing here?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m tap-dancing.” I was so mad at him for the way he’d treated Mr. Jenson. Being angry with me was one thing. I knew I deserved it. But taking it out on an old man? After all their years together? I didn’t care if Mr. Jenson had gone against orders by smuggling me in; Bryn should’ve treated him with more respect. Where was that loyal kid from the stories now?

I put the two bourbon pecan pies into the fridge next to the pair of pistachio layer cakes. When I turned, Bryn was standing in front of me.

“You shouldn’t fire him because you’re mad at me,” I said, moving around him to pick up the trays of cherry tartlets.

“I didn’t fire him. He resigned.”

“You pushed him into it!”

“I’m not the one doing the pushing. Jenson has an excellent budget. He could have found a local business to allow you to use their kitchen. In fact, he could have hired a car to take you to Dallas, rented a space for you to prepare everything, and had you and the food brought back.”

“Maybe he didn’t think of it. Not everyone plans things out twenty steps ahead like you do,” I snapped, feeling my heart race. I took a deep breath and lowered my voice. “Sometimes people aren’t thinking straight, and they make mistakes.”

He folded his arms across his chest, but at least he wasn’t clenching his jaw anymore. His voice was smooth, but not cold. “I suppose they do, but I can promise you that Jenson thought of the alternatives. He chose to go around my instructions because he wanted you here.”

“Maybe he did.” I chewed my lip for a moment as I put the trays away. “But you still can’t fire him. He cares a lot about you. You wouldn’t want to lose him. That would be bad judgment on your part.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“And besides,” I said, looking directly into his eyes so I’d be convincing. “He only let me come over because I told him that I wanted to apologize for yesterday and that I wanted to make it up to you by helping with the desserts for your party.” Nothing in the kitchen could’ve matched my tone for sweetness.

Bryn tipped his head back and laughed. I guess he’s pretty good at spotting lies, being something of an expert in them as a lawyer.

“I really am sorry for how rude I was last night,” I added sincerely. I saw his face soften and knew he didn’t want to stay mad at me. “Plus, when you taste that bourbon pecan pie, you won’t be sorry they let me in.” I stepped around him, hanging the spare white apron on the hook when I reached the door. “Good night.”

“Tamara.”

I paused with my hand on the knob.

“How’d it go today with Perth?”

I didn’t ask how he knew where I’d been. “My hair got real messed up riding around in that convertible he rented. Next time I’ll carry a comb.”

“How did the spells work out?”

I sighed. “They didn’t. Whatever the challenge is, I’m going to fail it.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Yep.” I cocked my head as I turned to face him. “The last time was lunch.”

“You could have dinner here. I was in the middle of some research. There are a couple more things I need to find, then I’d like to show it to you. I think I know why your power doesn’t respond to conventional training.”

For me, the answer to that question ranked up there with, “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?” and “What’s the meaning of life?”

My heart banged against my ribs, but I tried not to get my hopes up. Discovering the reason for my defective magic seemed like too big a miracle even for someone like Bryn to pull off.

“If you’ve figured that out, I don’t think I’ll be able to eat while I’m waiting to hear.”

“Not even grilled swordfish?”

My stomach growled. “Well, no use starving.”

Bryn smiled.

“And on your way to your library, you’ll talk to Mr. Jenson, right? Tell him he can’t resign?”

Bryn nodded, walking toward the door. “We would’ve worked it out, you know.”

“Good,” I said.

“What I’m saying is that you don’t have to fight for everyone. You’ll wear yourself out if you try to fix the whole world.”

“I know it. That’s why I just stick to Duvall.”

Chapter 18

After I ate, I washed my dish and stood around the kitchen for at least thirty whole seconds before I went down the hall looking for trouble. I mean Bryn.

I’d only opened two doors before Security Steve appeared in the hall. He was dressed in a navy blue blazer that made me think about Bryn’s boarding school days.

“Hey, you relieved the day guy, huh?”

Steve glanced around, rubbing a hand over his brush cut. “What are you doing here?” he said, taking my arm and trying to lead me toward the kitchen.

“I didn’t break in. He knows I’m in the house.”

Steve looked me over, and I laid a hand over my heart for emphasis.

“I was just looking for him.”

“Come with me,” he said, leading the way down the hall.

“You saw me on the monitor?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He let go of my arm, and we walked side by side. He knocked on a heavy carved door.

Bryn opened it, and Steve scrunched his eyebrows up. “Sorry to interrupt you. I noticed Miss Trask wandering and thought I should help her find you.”

Bryn nodded and stepped out of the doorway, waving me in. Steve headed back down the hall, but stopped and turned immediately when Bryn spoke. “Steve, the daytime security post is vacant. If you want to switch to days, you can. And I’ll interview your cousin tomorrow afternoon. Two o’clock if he can manage it.”

“I can do a double if you need me to cover the day shift, but I’ll keep nights if it’s okay with you. And he’ll be here at two.”

Bryn nodded, and Steve disappeared down the hall.

“You fired the daytime security man?”

“Have a seat, and don’t touch anything.”

I frowned. I didn’t like people getting fired over me, even if they were kind of rude to me on a semiregular basis.

The study had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Some of them had doors with fancy crisscrossing metalwork and stained-glass images of the planets and stars. The doors were open, with a key hanging from one of the locks.

I sat down on a dark brown leather couch. “Mr. Jenson’s staying, right?”

“Right,” Bryn said, scanning the bookshelves.

“So how come the security guy gets the ax?”

“Jenson brought you here in a misguided attempt at match-making. Winley, on the other hand, helped Jenson because Jenson paid him to. If Winley would take money from one man to betray me, he’d take money from another.”

“What if Mr. Jenson quits because you fired him?”

Bryn ran a hand over the spines of some books, peering at them. “I’ll acquaint Jenson with the skeletons from Winley’s past. After which, Jenson’s only question will be why I hired the man in the first place.”

“Why did you?”

“What is this? You planning to hire a household staff?”

“Absolutely. I’ve been needing someone tall to stack the pots and pans on the top shelves for me for the longest time. Getting that step stool out all the time is a pain in the behind.”

“Right, because you couldn’t find anyone tall to volunteer to do that for you,” he said. “There’s never a traffic jam of men wanting to help you with whatever you require,” he said, pulling a book from the shelf and flipping through it before he put it back.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re sure right. I get offers from guys to organize my canned food all the time. And there are never any strings attached.”

“It’s the strings that make life interesting,” he said, looking at me in that hungry way that makes me want to rush toward him and run away at the same time.

Needing a distraction, I leaned forward to look at a newsletter on the coffee table. The fancy lettering at the top had
W. U
. centered and in bold. It had been printed from a computer and the whole front page was an article about a missing man from Austin named Tom Brick. Next to a column of symbols, it said he’d last been seen October fourteenth and had been identified as a missing person on the twentieth when he didn’t return to work after his vacation.

“What’s W.U.?”

Bryn paused. “Can I trust you? With a dangerous secret?”

I bit my lip and nodded. “You can trust me to keep secrets.”

“W.U. stands for Wizard’s Underground, and it’s a banned publication. It contains stories and facts that aren’t available elsewhere because they’ve been suppressed. WAM’s current administration wants absolute control over the flow of information.”

“That’s not right. Haven’t they heard of freedom of speech?”

He smiled wryly. “They’ve heard of it.”

“Do you know the man who’s missing?”

“We’ve met.” Bryn slid a rolling ladder over and climbed halfway up to get a book off a high shelf. He thumbed through it.

“Where do you think he is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Says here he was on vacation. Maybe he stayed an extra week in Acapulco or something?”

Bryn came down the ladder with a book. “I’m sure they checked that out before reporting him missing.”

Bryn took the newsletter and tossed it in the fireplace. He said a few foreign words, and the paper caught fire, burning to ash.

Wow.
“You can do fire magic, too?”

“Some.” He nodded. “We need to look at this outside.”

He handed me the book and led me out of the room. He stopped at a utility closet to get a flashlight, then I followed him through the sunroom and outside to the dock. We climbed onto the stolen paddleboat and sat down.

“How come we’re out here?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.” He opened the book, shining the flashlight on the page. “What do you see?”

“It’s a spell.” I read the verse. “Sounds like maybe it’s for finding stuff that’s locked away.”

“Do you see anything else? Look closely.”

“You mean the gilding?”

“What do you mean by ‘gilding’?”

“The gold swirls in the margin, and—” I cocked my head.

“There’s something golden, a shape, coming out of the page. Like you’d see with 3-D glasses.”

“What kind of shape is it? Can you tell?”

“No, it’s just kind of a blob.” I stared at it, then shook my head. “I can’t tell.”

“I bet I can help you see it better.”

“How?”

“Kiss me.”

I folded my hands on my lap, studying them. We were barely back to being friends. I didn’t think complicating things was a good idea, even though kissing him is like the Fourth of July.

“This is just a magical experiment. I won’t take advantage of the moment.”

My heart pitter-pattered. What he said should have put me at ease, but instead it bugged me. I’m not some lab rat.

“I don’t kiss except for kissing’s sake.”

“Oh? Should I seduce you into it?” he whispered. “Then we might not stop.”

My cheeks burned. “Thought you were mad at me.”

“I was.”

“Not anymore?”

His dark blue eyes glittered. “No.”

“Still, it’s lucky that I didn’t agree to be your apprentice back when you asked last week. Then you would’ve been stuck with me.”

“Yeah, that would have been terrible,” he said, but it didn’t sound like he thought so. He slanted his mouth over mine, and we kissed. The power sparked to life, and I felt him draw some of it off.

When he leaned back, he asked, “What do you see?”

My lips tingled and burned in a cozy, sitting-by-the-fireplace-drinking-eggnog kind of way. I dragged my eyes away from his handsome face and looked at the book. A shimmering golden lion roared and leapt from the page. It circled me and pounced back onto the book, roaring again.

“I see it! It’s a lion,” I said, putting my fingertip out. My finger fell through it, the gold swirling around my hand. I pulled my hand back, and the lion re-formed. After a few moments, he faded again to a shimmering blob.

“I haven’t been able to see that lion since I was twelve,” Bryn said.

“Could you see him after we kissed?”

“I could make out a shape.”

“Why can’t we see him all the time?”

“In my case, it’s because I block the magic that put him there. When I kiss you, some of your magic disrupts my ability to do it.”

“Why do you block it?”

“Because I’m a wizard, and it’s fae magic.”

“Oh.” I stared at the book.

“I think you were right, Tamara. You are part faery. I suspect the two magicks don’t mesh well. When you were under the curse, your witch magic was suppressed, and the fae emerged unopposed. When I lifted the spell and the mixed nature of your magic was restored, you were changed on a fundamental level. That’s why the second containment spell I’d cast earlier couldn’t hold you. You were not the same creature, and the circle didn’t recognize you anymore.”

“My witch magic wasn’t suppressed. Some of it was temporarily stolen.” I explained about the symbols on the table and how the spell hadn’t been random. “But you said you could still feel my magic when I was under the witch-power-drainage spell, so it couldn’t be fae.”

“I know what I said.”

“But how could you feel it? If you block faery magic?”

“I don’t know.” He glanced back at his house. “I can’t find anything in the books to explain it.” He looked back at me. “My theory is that it has to do with the way we seem to be connected. The attraction, the physical contact, pulls down the barriers between us.”

“If you’re right about me, what does it mean? The powers don’t work because they cancel each other out?”

A sudden loud crack and huge splash twenty feet away startled us and nearly tipped the boat.

“What the Sam Houston?”

Bryn swung the flashlight onto the water in the direction of the crash. The river’s surface rippled.

“Was it the faeries?”

“I don’t think—” he began, but then I heard a crack and saw something flying toward us. I grabbed him and yanked, tipping us into the river. Even underwater, I felt the explosion. It threw us against his boat, and we came up sputtering.