Happily Ever After: A Novel (16 page)

Chapter 29

W
ait a minute,” Jason says, staring into my shoe box with horror. I’m starting to think Jason is the kind of person who would never store anything of value in an unlabeled shoe box for twelve years. Is our relationship already doomed? “Say that part again.”

“I wrote Clarissa before,” I repeat. “I thought I could write a paranormal romance, but it turned out I couldn’t so I abandoned the whole project.” I dump the shoe box out onto the table. “And I’m hoping something in here will make everything clear. Like if I could find the right spell or something.”

“You don’t remember them?”

I write four novels a year with at least several false starts thrown in there for good measure. I’m just as likely to remember all the kids in my kindergarten class.

“Do you remember every time you’ve gone to court?” I ask.

“Absolutely.” Well, no surprise there.

Most people are good at suspending their disbelief for a few hours in a dark movie theater or for a few chapters before passing out at night. It is one of our primary pleasures in life. But I’m asking Jason for quite a bit more. I’m asking him to blur the line between fantasy and reality. I’m asking him to bungee-jump tied to a shoelace. Of course, it might work, but we also might end up a stain at the bottom of the canyon.

“I’m sorry,” I say abruptly. “About all of this. It’s a lot.”

“Don’t be,” he says. “It’s oddly . . . fun.”

From his expression, I can tell Jason is beginning to understand that fun is not a luxury in life. It is necessary for our mental survival. He looks surprised.

“It’s a strange word for it, isn’t it?” he says.

“You may not think it’s so fun when you meet Clarissa,” I say.

“Tell me about her,” he says, swirling the wine in his glass. “Tell me about Clarissa and the spells. Talk it through and we might find something.”

My paranormal witch story is not unusual for being incomplete. There are dozens of unfinished manuscripts in my wake. Some are a page and a half long, others count in the hundreds. But all are beyond resurrection. Once I abandon an effort, I never go back. It’s too much like revisiting a failed romance or a broken marriage, especially when you know nothing can be gained from it.

Yet I’ve often wondered about the characters suspended in midformation, with a beginning and possibly a middle but no end. Sometimes at night, when I’ve accepted a project is not going to work, I swear I can hear them begging me to push forward. Save us, they scream. Don’t leave us here in limbo forever. Don’t leave us incomplete. It’s a little scary to think maybe they really have been speaking to me, that I’ve been sharing space with any number of pissed-off, half-baked characters.

I shudder at the thought. But Jason asked about Clarissa. I dig into the notes, spreading them out before us and forcing myself back over a decade. And this is what I tell him.

Clarissa Barnes was 212 years old but didn’t look a day over 25, one of the upsides of being a witch. Over the long course of her life, she’d acquired substantial wealth by marrying rich men and waiting around until they died. There was one not particularly nice gentleman who required a bit of help getting to the end, but she never lost any sleep over it.

Clarissa lived with her sister, Evangeline Barnes. Evangeline was only 208 years old and took every opportunity to rub Clarissa’s nose in it. But even so, both sisters knew Clarissa was the more powerful one. She had honed her craft over the centuries, and there was little she could not now command with a simple spell or charm.

One of the potential side effects of being old and powerful was boredom. It became harder and harder for the sisters to find ways to entertain themselves. Sure, they’d do the occasional haunting and enjoyed the screaming and terror of their victims well enough, but the high didn’t last. By the next day they were back to gazing into crystal balls and messing with the weather in Florida.

One day, Clarissa was staring out the enormous picture window that fronted their East Sixty-Third Street mansion when she caught sight of a man. He was young, with wide shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist. Wearing the traditional blue of a New York City beat cop, he looked like a poster child for law enforcement. Standing on the sidewalk staring up at her house, he removed his hat and ran his fingers through his dark, thick hair. He twirled a bunch of strands around a forefinger in a way that appeared almost nervous. As he did so, Clarissa caught a glimpse of a thin, faint scar on his forehead from some long-ago trauma. The sun glinted off his aviator sunglasses so sharply, Clarissa had to look away.

Rubbing her eyes to erase the sun spots, she turned back to find the young man gesturing for her to come to the door. The sisters tried very hard to fly under the radar, so when a cop beckoned, Clarissa came. But not without some trepidation. There was something in this man’s manner, as if he were quietly smoldering, simply waiting for a chance to pounce on an innocent young girl. Clarissa’s heart danced in tight, dizzy circles. He made her mouth water.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” the cop said as Clarissa threw open the heavy wooden front door. He removed his sunglasses and gave her a wicked smile, the kind that made clear he was well aware of his effect on women. He would not be a beat cop for long. As he stepped closer, Clarissa noticed how sharp his green eyes were against his pale, clear skin. The combination threw her off balance. She steadied herself against the doorjamb.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” the cop said. “But I was walking by and I noticed your window there is slightly open.” He gestured to one of the enormous street-level windows that was, in fact, wide open. “You might want to close it. Just to be on the safe side.”

Evangeline liked to paint in the front room and often kept the window open to avoid asphyxiation from the oil paint fumes. She did primarily landscapes of hell, or at least how she envisioned hell to be. Clarissa found the paintings dreadful, but they sold quite well to the nouveaux riches in the West Village.

“Ah,” Clarissa said. “My sister’s rather forgetful. I’ll close it right away. Thank you for noticing.”

“Well, you can’t be too careful, right? Who knows what sorts of characters might be lurking around these parts?” The beat cop laughed.

“True,” Clarissa agreed. “You never can tell.”

“Well, good day to you, ma’am,” the cop said, and donned his cap once more.

Oh, but he could not leave! Not yet! She found herself longing for his company in a visceral, unfamiliar way. She wanted to gaze deep into his eyes and see what made him burn. Was it desire or power? Who
was
this man?

Evangeline fell in love every twenty years or so. It was always sticky, loud, and messy, and inevitably would reach a point where Clarissa would have to whip up a few spells to banish all involved parties to various realities just so she could get some rest. Afterward, Evangeline was always genuinely sorry for the trouble, but then a couple of decades would pass and she’d be right back at it.

“You don’t understand love,” she’d moan when Clarissa reminded her of how badly it always turned out. “The way I feel when I’m in a lover’s arms, the anticipation, the need. It’s unlike anything in this world!”

But Clarissa did understand love. She had been observing its effects for over two centuries. It made one vulnerable and weak. It made one stupid and careless. More often than not, instead of making a girl whole, it would rip her to shreds. It was a fool’s game. And Clarissa was not a fool.

But right now she did not feel at all herself. She smiled down at the policeman.

“Do come in for coffee,” she said. “Let me reward you for your vigilance.”

“Thanks for the offer, ma’am,” he said, “but I’m on duty.”

Sparks of flower

Beware my heart

Change the power

And let it . . . start.

Clarissa chanted so quietly the cop was not even aware her lips were moving. He looked confused, as if time had somehow jumped forward and he had missed it.

“Did you say coffee?” he asked.

“Please,” Clarissa said, stepping aside. “Come in and join me.”

“Well, I guess it would be okay,” he said, appearing slightly stunned. “Just for a minute. Chief says to get to know the people in the neighborhood.”

“See?” Clarissa said. She swung the heavy door closed with a thud that made the man jump. “Just following orders. You’re good at your job. I can tell. May I take your hat?”

His name was Officer Perkins. He was twenty-five. He had big hands and teeth that would make an orthodontist swoon. His broad chest filled his uniform, straining the gold-colored buttons that ran down the front. He sat across from Clarissa, smiling and sipping a cup of coffee literally conjured from midair. Of course, the conjuring was done while Officer Perkins’s back was turned so as not to send the guy straight off the deep end first thing.

They chatted amiably about the neighborhood, but the air around them crackled with tension. After all, they
were
two beautiful people sharing a small space. By the time Clarissa escorted Officer Perkins to the door, the nugget of a rather evil plan had already begun to form in her mind.

“Evangeline, come here at once!”

Evangeline immediately materialized at Clarissa’s elbow, almost as if she’d been around the corner watching.

“My darling sister, whatever can be making you bellow so?”

Clarissa grasped Evangeline’s hands in her own and gave her a mischievous grin. Or it would have been mischievous on the face of a young child. On Clarissa, it was just plain nasty.

“I think I’ve found our entertainment for the next few months.”

“Oh, do tell, dear sister. I’ve been so utterly bored I’ve taken to playing the stock market.”

“I just met a man,” Clarissa said. “A policeman. Young, attractive, possibly capable of human-style darkness. In any case, he was concerned our window was left open.”

“Go on,” Evangeline urged.

“I propose a challenge,” Clarissa said, “a little friendly competition.”

Evangeline frowned. “You remember what happened the last time we did that?”

Clarissa brushed off the question. “That was an accident. I think we both learned a lesson, don’t you?”

Evangeline shrugged. “I suppose so. Certainly I can afford to hear you out.”

“His heart,” Clarissa said bluntly. “Who can win his heart?”

“That’s it?
That’s
the contest? The heart of a mortal man?”

Clarissa nodded.

“My word, dear sister, you’re taking witchiness to the next level. Brilliant! A love test! And when the competition is complete?”

“The winner may do with Officer Perkins as she pleases.”

“Oh, darling Clarissa!” Evangeline threw her arms around her sister’s neck. “I accept. The game is on!”

And so it began, the quest to make Officer Perkins fall in love with one or the other of the Barnes sisters. They pulled out all the stops. Potions, spells, chants, incantations. They went kinky, ingenue, innocent schoolgirl, and whore. There were no boundaries, nothing they would not try, And, as you might imagine, Officer Perkins enjoyed this aspect of the game he did not know he was playing immensely and decided not to examine the situation too closely for fear it would change. So the game went along just fine and everyone was truly entertained, although in different ways, until Evangeline actually began to fall in love with him. That, of course, complicated things.

At first, Clarissa could not see what was happening. Witches did not fall in love with humans. They stuck with their own kind and had, for as long as time had existed. So Evangeline harboring feelings for this mere mortal was preposterous. But all the signs were there. She walked around with an absentminded smile on her face. She couldn’t eat. She sighed continuously, often interrupting Clarissa’s train of thought. She would disappear for hours on end, only to return mysteriously, offering no information as to her whereabouts. She started to paint perfectly benign landscapes.

It was not Clarissa’s fault she didn’t figure it out sooner. After all, it had been about twenty-five years since Evangeline’s last disastrous affair, and Clarissa had worked very hard to put that one out of her mind. After consulting the stars, Clarissa knew she had no choice but to confront her sister and end the game. It was no longer fun. It had become dangerous.

Clarissa was waiting in the parlor, a small fire burning in the grate, when Evangeline floated in one of the back doors. She barely noticed Clarissa as she passed, murmuring what sounded like the love spells a teenage witch might come up with.

“You cannot have him, you know,” Clarissa said. Her voice stopped Evangeline in her tracks. The sisters stared at each other in the dim, flickering light. “He’s a mortal man. You cannot cross over. It would be the end of you.”

“My dear sister,” Evangeline said after a moment. “How kind of you to wait up for me. And thank you for your concern about my well-being.”

“The game is over,” Clarissa said. “You must let him go.”

Evangeline inhaled sharply, her angular features contorted.