Magic Gone Wild (15 page)

“What do you mean?”

“The clock. It was working fine last night when I left here, and this morning, it’s off by sixty-three seconds.”

Vana turned around and conjured another dish towel. She started drying the already dry pots so she wouldn’t have to face him. And see? Her magic was working fine. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Merlin.”

“In a manticore’s eye you don’t. What’d you do?” He landed on the drainboard and put a talon on the griddle she was about to pick up.

She worked up her best glare. “The clock is old. Is it so inconceivable that it isn’t working properly? Why does it have to be something I did? In case you hadn’t noticed, my magic is working fine.” She waggled the dry dish towel in front of him.

He pointed to the charred one in the sink. “So I see.” He hopped onto the faucet, eye level with her. “The clock is a precision Bavarian timepiece. If it was working correctly last night, it should be working the same way this morning. Five hundred and sixty-seven years I’ve known you, Van. I can tell when you’re up to something.”

“I’m not up to anything, Merlin, so keep your beak out of it.”

“Ah-ha! Out of what?”

“What?”

“You just said to keep my beak out of it, therefore, there has to be an ‘it’ to keep my beak out of. What is it?”

She threw the towel at him. And, of course, when she wanted it to burst into flame, it merely fell into the sink. “Get over yourself, bird.”

Then she spun on the heel of her
khussa
and headed out back. This was not the mood to be in to test her magic on the children. Human beings couldn’t be put back together with glue—even if they were in dish form. Maybe painting would work off her frustrations and help her ignore the bird.

But she knew Merlin. When he got a bug in his beak, he didn’t let go until he’d pulled every appendage from its torso. He wasn’t going to let this go.

Which meant she had to come up with a believable story because it was bad enough that she’d wiped Zane’s memory, but for Merlin to find out about it…

The bird might be a phoenix, but he did like to crow.

***

Gary locked his car door and had to refrain from skipping down the street.

A real estate agent. Zane had had a real estate agent at the house. God, he loved the wildfire effect of small-town gossip. Well, when he wasn’t the object of it, that was.

So Zane wasn’t moving back in. And even more importantly, the place would have to get cleaned out for the sale. In that ensuing chaos, no one, not even eagle-eyed Ertel, would notice some missing journals. And if Zane held a yard sale, all the better.

Or, wait… Maybe he could convince Zane to leave the journals to the town archives in Peter’s honor. Part of their history. He’d have to find some sickeningly sweet, unrefusable way to convince Zane that Peter would have wanted him to leave them for posterity and stress how much the town would appreciate the gesture. He had to play this right because he didn’t want Zane to have any reason to keep those journals.

Gary grabbed the pamphlets from the trunk and tucked them under his arm. Today’s PR campaign had just become more than a means to win the mayoral paycheck because the town archives fell under that office’s jurisdiction.

Mrs. Mancini, the Spanish teacher who’d made his senior year hell, smiled at him, and, for the first time, Gary could give her a sincere one in return. Those journals and their secrets were all but in his hands.

15

Zane had expected the looks. Even a few questions. What he hadn’t expected was the utter silence as people stared at him as if he were his great-grandfather reincarnated, strolling down the middle of the road stark naked.

He glanced down. Still dressed, but he was going to check with Vana to see if she could read his mind because he had the oddest feeling that he’d been naked around her.

Wishful
thinking.

Yeah, it was.

How did one ask a genie what the protocol was for sleeping together?
Could
she sleep with him?

That was a stupid question. All her parts had certainly responded the right way when they’d kissed. He couldn’t believe that they wouldn’t in bed.

He tripped on the curb and almost twisted his ankle as he landed in the gutter. Served him right. He needed to get his thoughts out of the metaphorical one and on to the reason he was here.

Carl’s Hardware was in the middle of a long row of brick-front stores. The same bench that had been there when he’d been a kid was still beneath the awning out front. His father used to buy him ice cream at Patty’s Parlor six stores down and they’d walk up to Carl’s to enjoy it. He’d told Dad he’d wanted to sit in the shade, but that was because Gary or one of his fellow bullies had usually been hanging out at the ice cream parlor. It’d been easier to avoid the confrontation than suffer through it.

Yeah, he enjoyed the irony of coming back as a professional athlete. No one would bully him now.

Something good had come from the bullying, though. Zane now gave speeches to school kids about the dangers of bullying to help others end the sort of the hell he’d gone through.

“That’s right, little lady. Step on over here.”

Speak of the devil. Gary stood outside Marsh’s Bakery accosting patrons, er, handing out some sort of pamphlet and schmoozing with a reporter.

“Come election day, all you have to do is push the button for Gary Huss for mayor, and this town will have all it needs to move into the twenty-first century.”

If they wanted a dictatorship. Zane doubted the guy had changed all that much in two decades. Gary always liked to call the shots. Took a lot of them, too.

“Zane Harrison!” Gary hollered when Zane made the mistake of catching his eye.

He should have brought Vana along and let her turn Gary into the rat that he was.

“Welcome back to your hometown!” Gary just wasn’t going to let it go. His tone was loud enough that the old men playing chess in the park across the street heard him, which would now link Gary’s name to the whisper-down-the-lane effect of the story of Zane’s return, an opportunity no politician would pass up.

Marlee, Zane’s publicist, would relish the PR op, but he had no intention of being part of Gary’s campaign.

Gary, unfortunately, had other ideas. He came over, clasped Zane on the shoulder, and shook his hand as if those twelve years of crap hadn’t happened.

“Local boy makes good. Our star athlete’s returned. What a great day this is for the town.” Gary had yet to let go of his hand, and yeah, the photographer beside the reporter snapped a picture. “Did you come downtown to help out the local economy, Zane?”

Much as Zane would like to tell the prick off, he wouldn’t. He did, however, yank his hand away. “Thanks for the welcome, Gary. It’s nice to be back.”

The reporter flipped a page in her notebook. She looked young enough that the stories of his great-grandfather would only be urban legends to her, which was fine with Zane. “Hi, Mr. Harrison. I’m Cathy Lindt, reporter for
The
Harrison
Daily
. Can I ask you some questions?”

“Sure.” He’d rather have said no, but turning her down would be as bad for his image as endorsing Gary.

“Did your family really move away because of the ghosts haunting your home?”

He needed a new publicist if Marlee thought this was a good idea. “We moved because my father died and the place was too big for my mother to keep up.”

“So you never saw any of the ghosts?”

“There are no—”

“Of course he couldn’t
see
any ghosts,” said Gary, stepping in front of Zane. Not unsurprising because Gary hadn’t liked sharing the limelight on a normal day. Now that he was running for office, he’d be even less inclined to. “They’re
ghosts
.”

The reporter took a step sideways so she was again facing Zane. “What about other phenomena? Things that moved by themselves, disappearing staircases, bears charging through the house?”

Zane withheld his wince. Man, he hated that story. “I don’t have any stories. I was young when we moved away. I got involved with football soon after and never had the chance to come back, especially once I was drafted.”

“So, are you back to stay now? Are you planning to retire here?”

Either the kid was utterly clueless or she was destined to become an investigative shark. His retirement, injury, and contract were all things he didn’t want to discuss. “I’m back to get the house in shape to sell.”

“You’re selling?” asked the reporter. “But a Harrison has owned that house for over a hundred years.”

“And no one’s lived in it for the past twenty. I think it’s time.” Zane edged toward the hardware store. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Oh, but—” The reporter hadn’t quite honed her stealthy side to the point it’d need to be, so Zane was able to slip inside the store before the rest of the question was asked. He’d let Marlee do damage control on this one if necessary.

“Well, look who it is! Zane Harrison!” said the blue-haired woman wearing a blue-and-white checkered vest behind the old-fashioned cash register. Zane glanced at her back to make sure she wasn’t sporting a tail on the off chance that Merlin could change his form like he could his feathers. “I’d know you anywhere. You look just like your father.”

“Thank you, Miss…”

“
Missus
, my dear boy. Mrs. Winters. I don’t suppose you remember me. I went to school with your father. Both me and my Johnny did.”

He did remember her. She’d been one of the few who’d believed him about Gary and the bullying. “Of course I do, Mrs. Winters. How are you?”

“Ah, well, my rheumatism keeps acting up when the weather gets damp, but I guess that’s to be expected. A tad lonely, too, now that the old gang is moving on, as we like to say. So much more positive than
dying
, you know?”

He
hmmmm
ed his reply. This place was a real party. Ghost stories, gossip, rheumatism, and death. Things hadn’t changed at all. “I need a few supplies to fix up the old home, Mrs. Winters. Can you point me to the paint, please?”

“In the back there. I can mix up any color you like. Carl’s son—he took over when Carl passed six years ago, you know—well, he finally broke down and bought one of those new paint-mixing machines since people were willing to drive forty miles to The Home Depot to get their colors made, which was just silly. Now they get them here, and the machine has paid for itself three times over. See? You
can
teach an old dog new tricks. Or I guess it’s an old dog that can teach you new tricks.” She chuckled, her ample bosom heaving beneath the blue-and-white-checked pattern.

“I believe you have a rather interesting shade of pink in one of the rooms in that house of yours, if I’m not mistaken, Zane,” she said when she’d recovered her composure.

Unfortunately, her comment nicked his. The empty bedroom on the third floor. He’d forgotten about the paint in that room. Dad and Mom had painted it at least once a year, and every year the pink would bleed back through. Weird.

Or… magic?

He’d have to have Vana fix that. He couldn’t sell the house with a self-painting room; the rumors would never go away.

“That color is long gone, Mrs. Winters.”

“Is it? I could have sworn June said she saw it the other day when she checked the place. She and Jack really appreciate you paying them to take care of the place. Ever since Jack hurt himself at work, well, the money’s been a godsend.”

“She must have meant the color of the curtains. I’m going to change those, too.” As soon as he had Vana un-magick the walls.

Zane headed down the closest aisle toward the paint. He didn’t want to get into any hero-worship discussion. He’d paid June and Jack Ertel because they were the closest neighbors and the house had needed the upkeep. The monthly check-ins he’d made with them had given him peace of mind and allowed him to stay away.

He should have sold the house right after Mom died, but it’d been easier to write the check to the Ertels than come back and deal with it. But life was now pushing him toward a slew of decisions he didn’t want to deal with. Coming here had been about getting things done instead of sitting around and stewing about things he couldn’t change.

Zane made quick work of the supplies and managed to hear only two stories about the eccentricities of his forefathers before he left the store. Mrs. Winters was a veritable font of information when it came to the Harrison reputation. Thank God, there weren’t too many of that old crowd left to remember all the stories.

He’d always been bummed that his parents had been older when they’d had him, a theme among Harrison men. Peter, Jonas, and his father had all married later in life, then had a child—just one, a son—even later. His father had been old enough to be his grandfather, and his age used to bother Zane a lot.