E. Godz (21 page)

"Tax purposes?" Dov's right eyebrow lifted.

"Tax purposes, insurance purposes, something like that. You know, like when you
want to take out a new policy and it calls for a physical? Most insurance companies won't
accept forms that are signed by herbalists, no matters how reputable. Edwina just doesn't
trust ordinary doctors; says their diagnoses are a crapshoot and they're too closed-minded
to accept alternative methods of healing. I'd have thought that if one of them told her she
was about to die, she'd laugh in his face and—" Abruptly, the witch-queen stopped
talking. She stared at Dov closely. "Mr. Godz?" she inquired apprehensively. "Mr. Godz,
is something wrong?"

"No," said Dov, his voice pitched to that soft, scary level that meant he'd had a very
telling revelation. "Nothing's wrong at all. In fact, everything you've just told me is so
very, very right that I was a fool not to notice it before now."

He stood up and bowed his head slightly to the witch-queen. "It's been a pleasure, but
I have to go. Now. Will you excuse me? I'll see myself out."

Fiorella swung her legs off the divan and reached out a staying hand, "Wait!" she
cried. "At least let me escort you back through the store. All that power—"

"Unnecessary," Dov replied as he stalked out. "Now I'll be able to stand it. Power and
I are old friends. You might even say we're family."

Midnight in Salem, Massachusetts.

The witching hour found Dov Godz slumped in his rental car in front of Ye Cat and
Cauldron engaged in high wizardry of the most puissant order, namely using his palmtop
to hack into the records of the M.D. who had supposedly pronounced his mother's death
sentence. First he used his own tech skills, enhanced by every drop of magic at his
command, to force a passage into Edwina's personal financial records, found evidence of
payment rendered for a recent physical examination (for insurance purposes, as he had
surmised), and obtained the examining physician's name from that.

Accessing the doctor's records was relatively simple.

Locating a copy of the report that the M.D. had e-mailed to the insurance company
was child's play.

Discovering that, in the doctor's professional opinion, Edwina Godz would live to see
ninety, was a kick in the head.

Deciding that maybe Edwina would not live to see ninety more seconds of life if he
had anything to say about it, was merely the vindictive desire of a moment, cast aside
almost as soon as brought to mind. Funny how relief at knowing that his mother wasn't at
death's doorstep after all was so quickly replaced by the urge to send her there, special
delivery.

Maybe he couldn't kill her, but he sure as hell was going to make her pay for what
she'd done to him.

"And Peez, too," he muttered at the glowing screen of his palmtop. "Damn it, Edwina,
what the hell were you thinking, putting us through this? Especially Peez. She's always
been more concerned about you than I ever was. She gets hurt too much, too easily, and
you knew it! Or you should have known it, if you'd paid half a lick of attention to either
of us. Why did you do it, Edwina? Nothing good on TV?" He snapped the palmtop shut,
started up the car, and drove back to his bed-and-breakfast, thinking dark thoughts all the
way.

The front door was locked and deadbolted when he got there. House rules clearly
posted in his room indicated that all guests should either plan on being back by midnight
or being elsewhere until six the next morning. Dov never was one for conforming to other
people's plans. He stroked one fingertip over both locks and they yielded to him
soundlessly.

As he climbed the stairs and opened the door to his bedroom he was still immersed in
thoughts of vague payback plots to invoke against his mother. He was so distracted that at
first he took the scene awaiting him—right in the middle of his bed, no less—for an
illusion.

Ammi the amulet, Dov's faithful companion throughout his recent travels, was
propped up on a lace-covered throw pillow, its silver eyes fixed on the wavering
apparition of a teddy bear that floated in the air just above the headboard. Bear and
amulet were in the middle of a very animated conversation:

"So then I says to her, I says, 'Peezie-pie, I jes' wuuvs New Owleenz all to eensy-
beansy pieces, yes I does, but oo isn't doing um's job by camping out in this swamp like a
brain-dead bullfrog!'" The ghostly bear looked angry and disgusted. "I says, 'You better
get cracking, get back in the saddle, back on the road, or else your brother's going to beat
you to the punch and steal the company out from under your nose!' And you know what
she says to that?"

"No," Ammi replied. "But if you've got an ounce of mercy in your stuffing, you'll tell
me without resorting to that dumbass baby-talk!"

"Hey, it keeps her happy, let's her believe you can hold onto your childhood forever."
The bear grinned. "Like Edwina says, play 'em right and children are easy to lead
anywhere you want them to go."

"Easy for her, maybe." Ammi snorted.

"Preach on," said the bear, in total agreement with the amulet. "I don't know what's
been happening, but the more Peez travels, the harder it gets for me to guide her the way I
want her to go. I sure could use Edwina's help on this, but whenever I try to get some
feedback she says I should stick to giving her my latest surveillance report."

"Tell me about it. I've been giving her the lowdown on what her precious sonny boy's
been up to, right on schedule, but when I ask her for maybe a little help with getting him
to cooperate with some of my plans, she clams up."

"Plans?"

"Two words: chest hair. I've been trying to get him to shave it off for ages."

"That's barbaric!" the bear exclaimed, crossing his paws protectively over his own
furry chest. "No wonder Edwina wouldn't—"

"Wouldn't what?" Dov asked, his voice dangerously free of all emotion as he stepped
into the bedroom.

"Oops. Busted," said the phantom bear. "Tough luck, Ammi. At least my half of the
operation's still safe. Ta-ta!" The apparition vanished just as Dov's fist closed over the
little amulet.

"All right," Dov told Ammi. "Start talking."

"I don't have any idea what you mean," Ammi replied, trying to act innocent and
failing spectacularly.

"Sure you don't. And I won't have any idea how you managed to get flushed down the
toilet. Maybe the thought of spending the rest of your unnatural born days with sewage
doesn't scare you. Maybe you figure that Edwina will rescue her faithful little spy. Maybe
you've got some kind of homing device inside you and maybe you don't, but it all comes
down to this: Are you feeling lucky, punk?"

"Aaaaiieee!" Ammi shrilled so loudly that it was even odds whether or not he'd wake
up everyone in the B&B. "Not that! Anything but that! I'll tell you everything I know,
only please, I beg you, I implore you, I cast myself upon your mercy and plead with you:
Stop with the bad Clint Eastwood imitations! There's only so much that mortal silver can
stand!"

Dov scowled. He thought he did a very good Clint Eastwood. "Fine," he said, biting
off the word short. "Deal. Talk."

"There's not a whole lot for me to say that you don't already know," Ammi began.
"Edwina contacted Teddy Tumtum and me on the q.t., asking us to keep closer tabs on
you and Peez than—"

"Closer tabs on us?" Dov cut in. "How long have you been spying on us?"

"How long has Peez had that blabbermouth bear?"

"Almost forever. But what about me, then? You've been part of my office equipment
from the first, but that leaves some pretty big stretches of my life unaccounted for. I
expected more thorough work from Edwina when it comes to domestic espionage."

"Then don't sweat it 'cause she didn't let you down. Your sister clings to that bear, so
he was the logical place to lodge a listening post. You, on the other hand, haven't got any
one thing that's special to you, so Edwina simply scattered dozens of information-
gathering devices throughout your life. It would've been too complicated to do that once
you hit the road, though, so she tapped me to take charge."

"And you talked your way into my confidence. Very neat, Ammi; very smooth. I
ought to flush you for that, at the very least."

"Aw, come on, Dov, you know you don't mean it," the little amulet wheedled. "I
admit that it was just a job to me at first, but the longer I traveled with you, the more I got
to know you and like you. I know that I'm only a trinket and I'm not supposed to have
feelings for anything or anyone, but when it comes to you, I do."

"Nice try. If I made a habit of believing in the impossible, you might have a fighting
chance of fooling me some more."

"Hey, I just know what I feel! Don't ask me to explain why or how it happened. I'm
magic, dammit! I've got enchantment oozing out of my pores! Okay, so I don't have
pores, but maybe some of the spells Edwina laid on me became such an ingrown part of
my essence that they screwed me up bad enough to have feelings, whether I want them or
not. I do like you, Dov, and I'm honestly sorry about spying on you, but that's the work I
was wrought for. And if you think that flushing me down the toilet will make you feel
better about the whole thing, then go ahead and flush me with my blessings!"

Dov pursed his lips, thinking over the amulet's impassioned words. At last he said:
"Nah. Why bother? You'll just clog up the pipes." He fastened Ammi back around his
neck and added: "You can stay, but there's going to be a few conditions."

"Like what?" the amulet asked, suspicious.

"First, you let me slap a truth spell on you; a destruction-level truth spell."

"Uhhh." Resting on a tuft of Dov's chest hair, the little amulet vibrated with anxiety.
Truth spells were not used to coerce or compel someone to tell the truth. Their actual
purpose was to make it very, very unpleasant for the person thus bespelled should he
choose to lie. Given the power of such enchantments, they required the full cooperation
and consent of the recipient, something along the lines of You knew the job was
dangerous when you took it.

A destruction-level truth spell spoke for itself as far as the consequences of telling a
lie while subject to its power. It was, to say the least, a major commitment on the part of
the recipient.

Ammi took a deep breath, blew it out, and finally said: "Okay. But put a time limit on
it, all right? I don't mind swearing to tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth or else kablammo, but not forever. I can't take the pressure."

"How would seventy-two hours suit you?"

"That's all?" The perfect silver brows drew together. "What's the catch?"

"Nothing. And I don't need a destruction-level truth spell on me to tell you this:
Within seventy-two hours, Edwina will have no further use for you or Teddy Tumtum or
any other device to spy on me or my sister ever again!"

White clouds billowed out in all directions from the open-air patio beneath the
awnings of the Cafe du Monde in New Orleans. Passers-by exchanged nervous glances
and sniffed the air, convinced that where there was so much smoke there had to be a fire
of Hollywood disaster-movie proportions.

Then they sniffed the air a second time and drooled. Nothing was burning. The only
scents on the early morning breeze were of heaping platters of freshly puffed-up beignets
and oceans of chicory-laced coffee. Those white clouds weren't smoke; they were sugar.

Under the awning, at a table with a clear view of the sidewalk (under less cloudy
conditions) Dov Godz sat at the epicenter of the sugar blast, leaned over, and offered his
sister the use of his handkerchief.

"If I'd known you were going to react like that, I'd have phoned you," he said. His
face, his hands, his hair and the front of his clothes were all covered with a thorough
dusting of powdered sugar. It had rolled over him like a tidal wave when he'd told Peez
the truth about Edwina's condition and his sister had responded by shouting, "WHAT?!"
right across the plate of beignets that their waitress was just setting down between them.

Unfortunately, at the time, the waitress was also balancing a tray laden with many
more beignet platters, intended for other tables. Peez's unexpected outburst took the poor
woman by surprise. She gave a little yelp of dismay and tossed her tray into the air. When
it hit the floor, powdered sugar reared up like the stem of a mushroom cloud and spread
everywhere. (Thus the appearance of a four-alarm fire at the Cafe du Monde when it was
really only a multiple beignet pileup on the interstate.)

"How did you expect me to react?" Peez countered, wiping her face with Dov's
handkerchief. She too wore a light dusting of powdered sugar, though nowhere near so
much as her brother. "First you show up on my doorstep—"

"You don't have a doorstep."

"All right, on the threshold of my hotel room, then. My first thought was that Mom
had died and you wanted to break the news to me gently, in person."

"Which would have been very kind of me to do," Dov remarked. "Even if it wouldn't
be the sort of thing you'd expect from me."

"Why wouldn't I?" Peez was genuinely puzzled.

"Well, it's been years and years since we've seen each other. I assumed it was your
choice because you, uh, weren't all that fond of my company. Most people don't tend to
hold high opinions of the folks they avoid."

"Dov, we've been avoiding each other." Peez reached out to pat her brother's hand.
"We've both been stubborn and we've both been stupid. I've finally come to realize that.
I'm not very proud of the person I was. You want to know what I really think of you?"

Dov pulled back just a hair and asked, "Is this going to hurt?"

"I think you're someone who is more than capable of kindness." It wasn't a lot, as
tributes go, but it was sincere.

Just as well, Dov thought. If she'd started gushing over me, I wouldn't have trusted
her for a Miami minute.

"You do?" he said.

"Of course I do! You know, Dov, I remember a lot more about our childhood than I
used to. I've chosen to remember it, and about time, too! While I've been on the road, I've
picked up a few new ways of looking at things. I used to do my best to forget all your
positive traits because that might mean I'd have to admit that the problems in my life
weren't all your fault."

"Same here." Dov scratched his head sheepishly. A miniature white cloud detached
itself from his scalp and rained sweetened dandruff onto his shoulders. "That's the good
thing about having a rival: You've always got someone to saddle with the blame for just
about everything."

Peez nodded. She ran one finger around the rim of her coffee mug, chasing away tiny
drifts of fallen sugar, and said: "When Mom first set this whole charade in motion, I
wanted to beat you out of the company leadership because I thought we were enemies.
Later on, I wasn't certain if I wanted the job myself, but I didn't want you to have it
because I thought you didn't appreciate what E. Godz, Inc. was really all about. I never
once thought to find you, to see if my assumptions about you were right or wrong."

"Same here twice," Dov said. "Well? Were you as wrong about me as I was about
you?"

"Very wrong," she said. "Very wrong and very ashamed. We're family, Dov. Not
enemies, not rivals, not strangers: family. We've had our differences—all families do—
but we've made the mistake of letting them get out of hand."

"We had help," Dov said bitterly, recalling his dream. "Edwina. Maybe things never
would have gotten so bad between us if she hadn't been playing games with us all those
years."

"She's still playing games, according to what you just told me," Peez said. "Nasty,
cruel games: telling us she's going to die soon, setting us up against each other again,
making us compete for a business empire that she never had any intentions of giving up!"

"Oh, she's going to give it up, all right." Dov smiled while he drank his coffee.

"When? Years from now? Decades? You told me the doctor's report pegged her for
dying at ninety, if then."

"How does tomorrow suit you?" Dov asked.

"Dov! You can't mean it."

"Can't mean—? Oh, I don't mean kill her. That would be bad corporate PR. What I've
got in mind is this: Since she sent us out individually to gather enough support from the
E. Godz, Inc. client base for one of us to take over the company after she's gone, we
combine that support and use it to take over the company right now."

"Mmm. Tempting, tempting." Peez drummed her fingertips on the powdery white
tabletop. "We'll have to plan this out carefully. If she's not sick, she's more than a match
for the two of us. She's been in the magic game a whole lot longer than we have,
remember."

"Yeah, but she's got one big weakness: She thinks that we're still a pair of snot-nosed
little kids who'd never dream of challenging Mommy. She may have more experience
than us, but we've got surprise on our side."

"Surprise and power." Peez licked her lips, though it was impossible to tell whether
she did so because she could almost taste their ultimate victory over Edwina or because
she could actually taste more of that blasted, omnipresent confectioner's sugar. "You do
know how to tap into the client reserves?"

"Ummm ... maybe?" Dov flashed a smile at his sister, one that did not belong to his
professional repertoire. It was the smile he'd always worn back in their earliest days
together, a helpless little puppy-dog of a smile that simply said how much he needed his
big sister to look out for him when he wasn't sure he had what it took to look out for
himself.

Peez smiled back. "You don't have a clue, do you?" she said without malice. "Every
person or group with the ability to raise the earth-power is like a storage battery. The
tapping spell is like a set of jumper cables. The only difference is you can't invoke it
unless you have the implicit consent of the storage battery to divert its power to your
purposes. It's an easy spell; you'll get it on the first try. And then I'll want you to teach me
some of yours."

"My pleasure."

"So, who have you got?"

"Got?"

"For batteries. You've been out there in the field same as me, courting the company's
most important clients, trying to get them to promise their collective support to you as the
potential head of E. Godz, Inc. Anyone who's given you his word has fulfilled the
condition of implicit consent that the tapping spell requires. I know you've got Mr. Bones
on your side already because he told me so."

"Same way I know that you've got Ray Rah and the Chicago group behind you," Dov
said. "Who else?"

"Uhhh." Peez mouth twitched just a tad. "No one," she said in a small voice.

"No one?"

"Some of the people I saw wouldn't give me their support, and the others, well, I
wasn't so sure that I wanted theirs. I never imagined I'd need their power to fight Mom or
I wouldn't have been so picky." She shrugged. "Too late for regrets. What about the other
groups backing you? Besides Mr. Bones, I mean."

"Uhhh."

Peez clapped her hands over her eyes. "Oh, Dov," she groaned.

"Hey, it's not my fault that Sam Turkey Feather wouldn't give me an answer while
Mom's still alive! Can you blame him? And that guy out in L.A., the Reverend
Everything—"

"Say no more. I felt the same way you did about him, at first, but he's not just a big
phony out to skin the suckers."

"He's not?" Dov was reluctant to believe her. "Well, I wish I'd known that while I was
out there. I might've swallowed my scruples and given him the hard sell."

"You did what you thought was right," Peez said. "We both did. Isn't it nice to know
that even when we weren't getting along, neither one of us hated the other enough to want
the company no matter what?"

"I guess so. But that still doesn't leave us with a lot of firepower to use on Mom." Dov
drained his coffee mug. "What about that guy in Seattle? The sculptor?"

Peez turned so radish-red that the waitress hurried up unbidden with a glass of ice
water. Peez took a big gulp, regained her self-control, and said: "He— Martin— He
wasn't ready to make a commitment. A business commitment. What about Fiorella in
Salem? She blew me off, so did she throw her support behind you?"

"To tell you the truth, Sis, we never got around to discussing that. As soon as she
made me see what Mom was really up to, I forgot about everything else."

"In other words, we've got bupkis, or a reasonable facsimile thereof." Peez sighed,
blowing sugar into new patterns on the table and her brother.

"Does this mean we just quit?" Dov asked. "After all she's put us through, we do
nothing?"

"What can we do? Tell her we're wise to her and we won't play her little games any
more? She'll just laugh and put her mind to creating new games."

Dov shook his head. "No," he said. "I'm not going to give up so easily. Like I said
before, we still have one thing on our side that she can't counter. We'll just have to lay
plans that rely more on surprise than power."

"Dov, I don't know about this. There's only so much that surprise can do."

Dov clasped Peez's hands firmly. "Peez, what's the worst that can happen? We make
our move on Edwina and we fail. What's she going to do to us then? Kill us? I don't think
so. Punish us? How? By sending us to our rooms with no supper?"

"She could throw us out of the company."

"Right. And that's the answer to my first question. Throwing us out of the company is
the absolutely worst thing she can do to us. Know what? That's not so bad."

"It's not?" A glimmer of hope showed in Peez's eyes.

"Sis, if I say it's not bad, you better listen," Dov said, radiating confidence. "This is
your baby brother talking, remember? The kid voted most likely to end up cleaning
windshields or running for Congress? Without the company, what kind of a career can I
hope for? I could fudge my resume from here to next January and it still wouldn't get me
a job bussing tables at McDonald's. If I can risk the wrath of Edwina, you certainly can."

"I don't know." Peez looked away. "I don't exactly have a whole lot of highly
marketable job skills either."

"Are you kidding me? You're brilliant, you're beautiful, you were born to organize,
and you've got an inborn talent for management that most people would kill for!"

His words made her stare at him as if he'd just been dropped out of the belly of an
alien mothership. "That's what you think of me?" she asked.

"Every word, good as gold." He crossed his heart with two fingers and held them up
in a Boy Scout salute, though the closest he'd ever come to the Scouts was an ill-
considered summertime flirtation with khaki shorts. "I saw how you were running the
New York office. Granted, I was watching you because I was hoping to catch you
screwing up, but I never could. That's how good you are." He sounded proud of her.

Peez stood up, leaned across the table, and planted a kiss on Dov's forehead before
sitting back down. "Dov, if you can come up with a plan that can surprise Edwina half as
much as you just surprised me, I'll be right behind you all the way. Got any ideas?"

"You know I do. But let's go get cleaned up a little first. I think we're starting to
attract bees." He pushed his chair away from the table and snapped his fingers to summon
the waitress. "Check, please!"

She had just returned with his credit card when Peez's cell phone rang. "Ugh! I
thought I had that thing turned off," she said as she answered it. "I hate people who turn a
restaurant into the world's biggest phone booth. I'll make this quick. Hello?"

"Hewwo, oo' mean ol' Peezie-pie," a quavery little voice assailed her ear. "Why oo'
goes away an' weaves um's Teddy Tumtum all by um's self? What has Peezie-pie's
naughty brovver Dov been saying 'bout Teddy Tumtum? Oo' much too smart to beweev
all the lies he gonna tell oo'. Lots an' lots an' lots of lies, lies, lies! Oo' comin' back soon,
'cause oo' doesn't wanna lose um's onwy fwend inna whole wide world, isn't dat wight?
Teddy Tumtum misses his ickle Peezie-pie, yes he does!"

"How dare you call me like this?" Peez snapped. "You're a fine one to talk about lies!
I told you, it's all over between us. You used me! You pretended to love me, you led me
to love you, and then you betrayed me! Maybe you think you can sweet talk your way
back into my heart, play me for a fool again. Ha! I'd like to see you try, if only so I could
have the satisfaction of telling you to go to hell all over again! All those years together
meant nothing to you. All that time I thought you were devoted to me when you were
really hers. Well, no more; she can have you. Get off my phone and get out of my life
because we are through!"