Love Charms (59 page)

26: The
Golden Girls

I held a hand in front of my face.
"Can you put a dimmer on that thing? You're going to melt the snow off the
roof."

The three Golden Enchantresses looked at
one another, and just like the doppelgänger of Gem in the spirit world, they
reverted to their normal selves. I looked down at my hands, wondering how I
could get my glow on.

The one in the center, the tallest, with
lovely long red hair flowing around her aging face, peered at my forehead.
"We were not told another Golden had been born." She turned to the
others. "How was she missed?" They began talking among themselves.

Dei Lucrii grasped Rah's arm. "We'll
just be going now. You can sort all this out." He pulled her toward the
front door, but paused to look at me with disdain. "Why did I ever even
think of capturing you?"

Great. One last rejection.

He was already halfway across the room.
"Wait!" I called. "You can't take her!"

Dad held on to me, preventing me from
moving away.

Without a word, one of the Goldens held
up a hand, and everyone froze except me. I walked around Dei Lucrii to approach
Rah, her pink curls flying around her face in perfect stillness, like a video
on pause.

"Tell us who you are," the
smallest enchantress said, looking very stern with her hair all tied up in a
gray bun.

"I'm Jet, daughter of Tessandra and
granddaughter of Gem." I grasped Rah's stiff hand. "Don't let him
take her away."

The women muttered a few more things, but
I couldn't pull myself from Rah. Her clothing wasn't frozen, so I straightened
her skirt where it had hiked above her knee.

"Why did you run an illegal
spell?" the redhead asked.

"No choice." I reached up to
smooth Rah's face. Such a beautiful girl.

"Did you take the potion
yourself?" The redhead came forward.

"Oh, yes. I had to drink it to get
Dei Lucrii to take it. Seems like we've both fallen for Rah." I turned to
them. "Can you release her now? It will be a lot easier to get away if you
give us a head start."

"You can't go with her," the
small one said. "You're already matched. It's on your wrist."

I glanced down. I couldn't see anything.

"Oh, for Pete's sake, repeat after
me." The redhead was definitely annoyed. "Bedelage amante."

"Bedelage amante," I said. And
there it was, a marking on my inside wrist. A green CEG. "What does that
mean?"

"Caleb's mark. You already did the
first ritual, so you were marked."

"The kiss?"

"Untrained enchanters," the
redhead muttered. "Yes. All your first rituals were marked on you until
Caleb dismissed the others and you agreed."

"The initials of all the boys I
kissed were on my arms?" Did I have that much room?

The redhead tapped her foot in annoyance.
"I'm sure you looked like a tattooed lady from the circus, but you're
designated now."

I looked at Rah. "But she's the
one."

"It will take all of us to break the
spell," the third one said, a plump woman with bright eyes. "She used
Poison Lyceria in it. It's until death."

"She'll have to live with it,"
the redhead said. "Same as Dei Lucrii."

"I don't mind." I tried to go
back to Rah, but the redhead held me with a threatening lift of her eyebrow.

"What a mess," the little one
said. "Binding Dei Lucrii to the human was probably helpful, but that girl
can't have them both."

"If we three are all in agreement,
we can release her," the plump one said.

"I'm not in agreement," the
redhead said. "Illegal potions are illegal for a reason. Besides, if we
break it, then he's free too."

Hallow chose that moment to stroll into
the room. "Hello, ladies. Looking for a familiar?"

"Good grief, Hallow, you're still
hanging around here?" The little one bent down to pet him.

Geez. He was nice to THOSE enchanters.

Dei Lucrii started to move, his hand
coming down by degrees.

"Shall we renew the freeze
enchantment or let them thaw?" the plump one asked.

"Oh, let them go," the redhead
said. "This is a mess."

"Are we going to punish her?"
the plump one asked. "Illegal spells are usually an exile offense."

"She's not even trained. And a
Golden. Someone would snatch her immediately." The redhead circled the
room, looking at Dad. "An unmarked enchanter. This is a huge
problem."

"I always thought so," Hallow
said. "But no one asked me."

Dad's arm dropped suddenly, smacking
against his leg. The women were looking elsewhere, so I headed back to Rah, who
was still unmoving.

Dei Lucrii moved his arms, then his head.
He emitted a strange sound but wasn't quite up for speech. Who cared? I waited
for a change in Rah.

"Jet," the redhead said.
"Caleb dropped his other matches. I assume this means you wanted
him?"

I tried to pull him forward in my mind,
to feel something for him rather than Rah. "I did then."

Dei Lucrii moved a leg, lurching toward
us. I shifted so I stood between them.

"I say let's take her to Caleb. See
if that helps," the little one said. "Between the match bind and the
doubling up on a human, she might be able to fight it."

"You two handle it," the
redhead said. "I need to return to a birth." She opened a brown
leather bag and disappeared into it.

"Whoa. Was that her portal?" I
wanted one of those.

"Jet, come here immediately."
The little one held out her hand.

I didn't want to leave Rah.

"That means now."

I frowned but tore myself away. Dei
Lucrii was moving now, stiffly. Dad had also managed to change his position.
Poor Rah, though, I guess since she was human, was still stuck.

"They will figure out their own
issues," the plump woman said. "For now, we're off." She took my
hand.

I tried to ask, "Where —"
But we were already in blackness.

27:
Selective Memory

We landed on Caleb's front doorstep.

"Whoa," I said. "You don't
need a portal?"

"We'll train you on travel as soon
as we get this little hitch ironed out," the little one said.

"Why didn't you take us
inside?" the plump one asked, straightening her skirt. "It's
cold."

"No need to send Genevieve into a
panic," the little Golden said. "She's already closed all her
portals." She looked pointedly down at me. "No doubt due to this
one."

I tugged the scarf around me. "Can
someone ring the doorbell?"

The little one reached over for it. They
weren't shivering like I was, and the snow around their feet was already
melting. "Hey! Teach me the warm-up spell."

The plump one shook her head. "You
need proper training from the ground up. And a new attitude. Goldens have a
certain reputation to maintain."

"As soon as we verify that this
match will continue, we'll take you to a safe realm so you may learn your craft
and avoid costly mistakes like this one." The little one looked down at
me. "Did you happen to put a failsafe in the potion?"

"I don't know what that is."

"It's one of the variables,"
she said.

"Like grasswort to wear off after a
baby is born, and Poison Lyceria for life?"

"Yes, like that, only this one is
for distance, how far the lovers can be apart before the potion begins to lose
effectiveness." The short enchantress poked the other. "What is it
again?"

"It's the tears," the plump one
said. "Dying tears reach beyond all realms. Wedding tears reach across
oceans."

I hadn't used those. "I put in
newborn tears."

The little one smiled. "Ah, that was
a wise choice. It only works as far as a mother can walk before her baby
cries." She peered at me. "How are you feeling?"

Now that she mentioned it, my need for
Rah had settled to a dull ache rather than the rage I'd felt at home. "Not
as bad as before."

The plump one frowned at the door.
"Where is that beastly woman? We're going to have to barge in."

"I've had enough," the little
one said. "This generation has lost its manners." She shoved her palm
forward, and the door popped open.

Dang, she hadn't even said any words. I
looked at my hands. This was going to be fun, eventually.

We entered the house just as Genevieve
rounded the corner to the foyer and jumped a foot in the air. The two Goldens
had their glow on.

She knelt down. "I am honored for
your visit. How can I —"

I was closer to the door, but I knew the
moment she spotted me.

"What is SHE doing here?"
Genevieve's voice was more like a sputter.

"Jet, come here," the little
one said.

I walked forward.

Genevieve peered up at me. "Is that
a golden mark on you?" She turned back to the other two. "She's a
Golden?"

"Indeed," the plump one said.
"And we have need of your son Caleb. He is her match, and we need him to
test the limits of her spell."

"He—he's her match?"
Genevieve's voice cracked.

The little one frowned. "Were you
not aware that your own son had dismissed his other matches and performed two
rituals?"

Genevieve glared at me. "You lured
him into the second ritual?"

I held up my hands. "I don't even
know what they are!"

"Genevieve, it is an honor to be
matched to a Golden, and don't you forget it!" the little one snapped.
"Send your boy here at once."

Genevieve glanced at the grandfather
clock. "I—I can't. I performed a dissolve."

"How much time remains?" the
plump one asked.

"About four hours."

"Close enough." The little one
gestured to me. "She's untrained, but she'll do." The two Goldens
held hands, and the plump one grasped mine.

"You need to know our names to break
a spell. It's not something to take lightly, and it requires three Goldens who
are acquainted but not affected by the enchantment," the plump one said.
"I'm Ellondra, and this little thing is Deja."

"Ellondra and Deja. Got it."

They began an enchantment I couldn't
follow. I watched Genevieve instead, who was backing toward the wall. Ellondra
held my hand firmly, and as they finished speaking, I felt a spark fly between
us, like an electrical shock. "Don't let go," she warned.

Caleb began to materialize from the
ground up, first his shoes, then his jeans, his shirt and arms, and finally his
face. He shivered for a minute, then seemed to shake it off. When he saw me, he
dashed forward. "Jet! You're all right!" He pulled me close.

"Of course I am. I'm not the one who
crumbled like a cookie."

He pulled back, frowning, and I could see
confusion in his turquoise eyes. "Are you hurt? Did he do something to you?"

"More like she did it to
herself." Ellondra shook her head. "We need you to help her with a
little potion problem."

Caleb stared at my forehead. "What
is this?" He pushed my hair aside to look more closely. "Why are you
bearing the mark of a Golden?"

Deja clapped her hands. "You didn't
tell him?"

"I barely knew it myself!"

"We can be together without
exile!" Caleb's expression filled with such pure joy, I didn't know how to
break it to him that I wanted Rah.

He saw something on my face again,
though, and turned to the Goldens. "What happened with the potion?"

"She drank it."

He snapped back around. "Are you in
love with Dei Lucrii?"

"No no no," Ellondra said.
"She was clever with it. Well, mostly. She and Dei Lucrii are both
enchanted by a human. We expect it should be easy enough for a young match like
you to overcome."

"You can't break the spell?"

"Cristaba won't agree. Dei Lucrii
would also be released," Ellondra said. "Apparently he was giving Jet
here some trouble."

"He was," I said. "I made
the potion so he wouldn't come after you."

Caleb pulled me close again. "We'll
figure this out. I'll help you. We'll find a way."

"That will have to wait," Deja
said. "Since you have confirmed your match, we are going to take her off
to training now. We'll be back in two years."

"Two years!" Caleb and I said
it simultaneously.

Deja crossed her arms over her petite
chest, all business. "Normally you'd come with us when you were sixteen,
so you'd be fully Golden in time for your match. Gem made this mess for
you."

"Can you just give us a
minute?" Caleb asked. "Alone?"

Deja sighed. "Young love. All
right." She turned to Genevieve. "You have any poppy milk in this
place?" The three of them disappeared down the hall toward the kitchen.

Caleb didn't waste even a minute before
pressing his mouth on mine. I railed against it at first, thinking only of Rah,
but then I remembered him, yes, we'd done this many times, and I'd liked it
quite a lot. Even though he only struck me now as some boy I'd once known,
there did seem to be some place in my heart where he'd been.

He pulled away and looked behind him.
"I know where we can go."

"Aren't all your portals
closed?"

"Where we're going, we don't need
portals." He grasped me firmly against his chest and began a chant.

Immediately we were down in the dungeon,
the human wing where they'd kept Dad.

I guess we had found it romantic before.
Something urgent began to pulse in my belly, and I remembered how it felt to
press my hands to his spine, the jolt that was both thrilling and comforting, a
closeness I hadn't even gotten to try with Rah. Now that we were down in the
earth, my need for her lessened, and I could focus on Caleb.

"It's got an old-world charm,"
I said.

"This section is not resistant to
magic." He began a song that sounded like an Irish lullaby, and the walls
of the dungeon began to shift and change until they were completely gone and
above us was night sky. The concrete gave way to cool grass, and with one flip
of his hands, cicadas began singing. He raised an arm, and the temperature rose
several notches, completing the sense that we were outdoors on a summer night.

"This better?"

"I can't wait to learn to do
that," I said.

"I thought you'd like it." He
sat down and tugged on my hand so that I would come down with him. "In the
dissolve, all I could think about was you."

"Really?" I wanted to melt into
him, but still, the drumbeat of Rah, while slow and faint, wouldn't quite go
silent.

He lay back. "It's a strange place,
the dissolve. You have no body, no sensations. It's pure thought."

I settled next to him, staring up at the
sky. He'd made it accurate, with constellations and a perfect moon, unlike the
bad fake in the spirit realm. "Sounds like an escape," I said.

"You don't feel any urgency, no
matter what was going on before you crumbled." He laughed a little.
"I never heard anyone describe it like that."

"Scared the crap out of me."

He shifted to his side, propped up on an
elbow, and leaned in to me. "I can't believe I'm finally here with
you."

"Oh, believe it!" I felt the
urge to sit up and move away, back to Rah, but also the need for him to touch
me. They warred within me, so I just stayed there, listening to both needs, two
discordant notes.

His fingers slid along my arm, light
against the textured knit of my sweater. "Your hair is the perfect shade
of yellow." He pinched a lock between his fingers. "I wonder how
you'll look once you are Golden."

"Are you okay with that? I mean, you
were all fine when I was a nix."

"How can I not be? It's the biggest
honor in our world."

"So you still want me as a
match?"

"I would take you any way you came,
just as long as you were you."

His eyes searched my face, and in the low
light I couldn't see our twin colors. "I can feel the potion working in
me." I had to admit it.

"I can feel it too. Do you want to
move forward? See what happens?"

"You mean with the rituals? Deja
said we had already done two."

He smiled. "The first one was the
kiss, of course. I told you that. Most all matches get that far."

"What was the second?"

He reached for my hand and led it across
his body, under his shirt, and against his spine.

The electric charge jolted through me one
more time, as powerful as it had ever been. "That is the second." His
face was so close to mine that his words were a breath across my cheek. One of
the factions battling in my head gave way, and I arched toward him, wanting him
to touch me too, and our lips met again.

This time, I felt the heady dizziness I
remembered from before. Caleb reached around and threaded his hand beneath my
sweater, shocking my system a second time and completing the circuit, a bolt
that fizzed through us like a fuse, spine to head to mouth to chest, touching
every tingly part of me.

I rolled tightly against him without any
thought of Rah, or the Goldens, or getting caught, or what ritual we might be
on or how enchanter babies were made. I wanted all of him, every bit, and
surely the world would not interrupt us again.

Caleb must have sensed I had reengaged,
as he pulled my sweater up and away, tucking it under my head like a pillow.

"You couldn't have conjured a
bed?" I asked.

"If that's what you want."

The grass was fragrant and cool, the
earth beneath it not hard but spongy, like a soft mat. "No, you made this
spot perfect." I brushed my fist against his jaw. "I bet you bring
all the enchanter girls here."

He got perfectly solemn then and shook
his head. "Just you. There was never anyone but you."

My throat tried to close up, and through
my vision flashed the partners who had been in these places with me, not the least
of which was Gordon, the one who'd rejected me last. "Is there a forget
spell?" I asked.

His eyebrows drew together. "Like to
erase your memory?"

"Not all of it." I squeezed his
hand. "Just parts."

"It depends. You'd want to really
narrow it down. A spell like that can't be undone, not even by three
Goldens."

I almost laughed, realizing I'd already
done one of the most powerful enchantments in this realm, using a Golden trio
to break a spell. "It's pretty specific."

"Can you tell me what you want to
forget?"

So many things, I thought, all those
boys, the wishing that they were the right boys, and the messy breakups, ugly
moments like when Gordon walked away. But that was too much memory to let go,
and I'd learned from them. "I want to be like you," I said finally.