Magical Weddings (21 page)

That’s got to be killing her. I know she wants to get back to work
.

Colleen swirled the last swallow of cold tea in her cup and drank it, for once not rushing to return the cup to the kitchen, but setting it on the deep windowsill, as Shelley would have done.

She found her anger not as heated as yesterday. How could it be? She’d never been able to hold onto a grudge. But the sting of it lingered.

“He can come onto the property any time he likes,” she told Lysée.

“I thought you said–”

“Drayhome can give him a swift kick, but I can’t keep him out,” Colleen said. “I can’t keep anyone out. It’s not my function as caretaker. Not part of my gift. I’m supposed to be the welcome wagon.”

“Maybe he’s waiting for an invitation?”

“Then he can wait all day.”

A rotten day it was, too, weather-wise. Frigid, wet winds blew from the northwest lowering the real-feel temperature into the upper twenties.

“
Colleen
.” Lysée admonished her. “Go! Out there. Talk to him.”

“You don’t know what this is about.”

“I know you argued yesterday. He did something to upset you, but–”

“It’s bigger than that. Much bigger. You don’t know what he’s done,
is
doing. What they’re planning to do to all of…”

“They? Who? What is someone planning?”

Though patient, stoic, Ax’s eyes implored her from seventy yards away. She wasn’t hidden behind the glass. He could see her. He wasn’t just staring at a random spot on Drayhome’s façade.

“
Colleen
.” Of anyone beside Ax, Lysée probably understood her the best, the reticence to connect with others. Still, the other witch couldn’t help it. Lysée’s innate compassion begged her to reassure Colleen. “You can tell me,” she said.

I wish I could. I wish I knew it wouldn’t make things worse
.

“You’re right. I need to go talk to him,” Colleen said. “Guests will begin arriving soon. He’s blocking the driveway.”

His long hair knotted on itself in the wind. Frost wove ice into his brows, but Ax didn’t shake from the cold as she walked up to him and stopped five feet from where drive met highway. She watched him. He watched her. She waited. He waited. She was the first to flinch in the contest of wills.

“Lysée was right,” she said. “Snow for wedding day.”

Darker clouds than they’d seen in weeks cast the day in blue pallor, washing out the vibrancy and hue of everything around her, until mid-morning resembled a late winter evening. Gone were the bright reds and yellows and purples of yesterday’s near summer garden, dulled by the coming storm.

“I’m worried about the hummingbirds,” she said.

Ax didn’t respond to this nervous chatter, only continued to wait.

She got to the point. “You here to evict me?”

“There’s a wedding first, Colleen,” he spoke at last. “Even The Priest recognizes he can’t cancel this wedding spell.”

“Oh,” she said, “But he thinks he can control others in the future, control the place magic?”

“Don’t play idiot, Colleen. He doesn’t. He’s ruthless,” As said. “No one controls the place magic. He wants to control what’s done with it and where.”

“So of course his conclave sent you to do their dirty work. They couldn’t have sent some other thug to do it?”

“Not fair. I’m the only thug they have.”

“But they thought they’d need someone like
you,
their enforcer, to toss me out of here.”

“Well, you are pretty firmly entrenched. May I?” Ax gestured at the drive, seeking welcome.

“Go ahead,” she said. “I can’t stop you.”

“No, you can only flick my ass into space like a mosquito off someone’s arm.”

“That was Drayhome, not me.”

“You are Drayhome.”

“No I’m not. Not the way you mean. If anyone was Drayhome it was Spirit, and he’s no longer here to save the day.”

She saw him hesitate, showing some trepidation when he lifted one booted foot and prepared to set it on estate soil. She let him squirm a bit until both feet were firmly on the property and nothing untoward happened.

“You’re fine,” she said. “Drayhome isn’t up for a fight this morning.”

“Colleen,” he said.

Here it came. He was ready to start in on a whole other conversation she didn’t want to have. Abruptly, she headed back toward the house at a brisk clip. Her words came out rapid fire. “Why is this happening? Why can’t we just keep Drayhome? Why is this so important to Wise?”

“Colleen,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She stopped. Flight was useless. She couldn’t outwalk or run him.

“And what good is that?” she said. “Does that solve the problem?”

“No.”

“Does your being sorry stop him?”

“A nice thought, but no.”

She so wanted to rewind events to the morning after the wedding spell, days before discovering his real purpose here, when they were simply Ax and Colleen, standing in the kitchen with the scents of chocolate and desire perfuming the air. Already, those two people were gone, and she missed them terribly. She wanted her blissful ignorance back. She wanted him back.

“Why does Ramsay Wise hate Drayhome so much?” she asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Ax said. “The Priest doesn’t like competition, and Drayhome is competition for him and his cronies.”

“How can a house be competition?”

“Not the house specifically,” he said. “Its history. Every wedding held here, every meeting and ritual serves as a reminder of the way things used to be.”

“Before Spirit left and we lost two more elementals.”

“Exactly,” Ax said. “Move everything away from Drayhome and soon people will forget we’ve been in emergency conclave for
half a century
. Do that and they’ll begin to think the conclave is normal. People will reorient themselves to the idea that elementals were never the true leaders of our community.”

“Or so The Priest believes,” Colleen said.

“Or so The Priest believes,” Ax said.

Tires crunched on gravel as a Fawn-colored 1960s Corvair pulled into the estate and sped up, only to screech to a stop when it reached Ax and Colleen. At the wheel was Reggie, the warlock from the library who was supposedly in love with a human. He’d dressed for the wedding in a tux, fine blonde hair cut high and tight and slicked back with pomade
a la
the 1930s. Rolling down the driver’s side window, he passed Ax a long cardboard tube, the type used for blueprints.

“They’re right behind me,” Reggie said. “Lindy from the assessor’s office. Jorgos from county. They’re in a sheriff’s deputy’s cruiser. I don’t think the deputy is just for show or to play chauffeur.”

“Okay.” Ax patted the cardboard tube. “Everything in here?”

Reggie nodded. “Copies of everything we discussed. Plus one thing we didn’t.”

“What?”

“Memory spell. Even if they forget you, they’ll remember the tube and its contents when they get back to town. I didn’t want them just leaving it in the back seat.”

“But you don’t have–” Ax said.

“Called in a colleague to help,” Reggie said.

“How much extra do I owe you?

“Consider it a bonus.”

Ax and Reggie shook hands.

“Thanks, Reginald. Appreciate it.”

Reggie glanced in the Corvair’s rear view mirror. “Oh. Here they come.”

Ax stepped out of the way. Colleen, who had listened to the entire conversation without a clue as to what was being said, backed onto the lawn.

“Good luck,” Reggie called to them and drove for guest parking.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“Not now. Colleen. Go back to the house,” Ax said.

“Like hell, I will,” Colleen told him.

Ax should have known he couldn’t order her to do anything. He just hoped she wouldn’t interfere and blow this. She could be a stickler when least expected.

He stepped back into the middle of the drive and watched the Dodge Diplomat carrying deputy, assessor and county administrator roll to a stop in front of him. First to climb out of the vehicle was the sheriff’s deputy, holding an aluminum documents folder. In official law enforcement mode, the seasoned officer carried himself confidently. Ax met his gaze, the exchange confirming what each knew. Ax was going to be a problem. The deputy recognized and wasn’t happy about this, but had no intention of backing down.

Bolstered by the deputy’s no-nonsense demeanor, the other two got out of the car and joined him. One was mid-forties and immediately shivering in a Trail Blazers jacket better suited to cool rather than cold weather. The shiny satin fabric encased his paunch. About the same age as the first man, the other official swam in a brown pleather and faux shearling coat too loose on his frame, the bridge of his nose dented from eyeglasses he was apparently too vain to wear in public.

Ax didn’t know which was Lindy and which was Jorgos. He’d never met either. He didn’t care.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” he said.

“Good morning, sir,” the deputy said.

Ax read his name off a piece of masking tape across the document file, ERICKS.

“May I have your name, sir?” Deputy Ericks asked.

“Paxton.”

“Do you reside here, Mr. Paxton?”

“No.”

Ericks leaned to the right, around Ax to talk to Colleen. “How about you, ma’am, do you live here?”

Colleen frowned. “I–”

“She does, but I’ll ask you to address me,” Ax said.

Deputy Ericks didn’t like that. Though trained to remain calm, Ax sensed the heat under the man’s collar, notching upward.

“What exactly is your relationship to this property, Mr. Paxton?”

“I guard Drayhome,” Ax said.

Either Jorgos or Lindy, who knew which, the hefty one, tittered at that. “You mean you’re a rent-a-cop.”

Ax decided to assign
Lindy
to the overweight man. It sounded right.

“I’m the property’s guard.”

“Whatever,” Lindy said. “Deputy, do your duty.”

Ericks bristled, but complied. Opening the metal documents file, he slid out a court order with the words NOTICE TO VACATE printed in bold letters at the top.

“Ma’am.” The deputy started around Ax toward Colleen. “I’m here to serve you with a 72-hour notice of–”

Ax stepped into his path, blocking the officer from getting to Colleen.

“No,” Ax said. “You’re not.”

“Sir, I’ll ask you to move aside.”

“No,” Ax said. “Nor will you be serving Miss McColly with notice of anything. This is private property. I’m asking you politely to leave.”

“And I’m asking you to step aside, Mr. Paxton. The county, represented by these two gentlemen behind me, has obtained a judgment for unlawful detainer. Neither Ms. McColly or anyone else has the right to reside here.”

“We have every right.”

“Excuse me?” Lindy said.

Ax uncapped the cardboard tube and slid out a copy of an ornate antique document. “A copy of the original land grant dated 1829.”

“1829.” The thin one, Jorgos, Ax had decided, spoke up. “There wasn’t even a government here in 1829. This was barely a territory.”

“And yet, I have a land patent for 12,800 acres, signed by then president of the United States, John Quincy Adams,” Ax said. He handed the copy to Jorgos, and pulled another two copies out of the tube and passed those along, as well. “The claim was reaffirmed by the provisional government in Champoeg in 1842 as you see in this second document. And again in 1850 with the third document.”

“This isn’t real,” Lindy said.

“It is very real,” Ax said, “As is the fact we still own the land on which Breens Mist was built.”

“What!” the two men cried jointly.

Lindy moved aggressively closer, itching for an argument.

Jorgos just stood there with a scowl, mouth gaping.

Ax removed the largest document from the tube, a copy of a plat depicting the Drayhome Grant, as the document was titled. Though crude compared to modern survey maps and dated prior to the founding of the nearby town, recognizable landmarks clearly showed the house and its surrounding lands encompassed the entirety of Breens Mist. Official seals on the grants and map—now safely ensconced in the historic country archives—looked authentic because they were authentic, thanks to Reggie and his gift as a records warlock. Ax knew the paper and ink used to create them would stand up to any test a lab could put them to.

“Where did you get these?” Jorgos asked.

“Where else? The county clerk’s office.”

“If so, you, Ms. McColly and your predecessors had been defrauding the people of Breens Mist for well over a century, by tricking them into paying your taxes,” the spindly man in pleather said.

Ax couldn’t suppress a chuckle at the man’s expense.

Trust an assessor, whose job it was to determine the worth of a property so that taxes could be levied, to employ the type of inverted logic required to blame Drayhome for not paying levies on lands humans had basically stolen from them.

He’d gotten the names wrong then. The heavy man was Jorgos, the county official. The thin one, now grasping for his glasses in one of his coat’s pockets, was Lindy.

“And finally,” Ax said, “We have this.”

Lindy slid his bifocals onto his face and grabbed in irritation at the photocopy Ax offered him.

“What’s this supposed to be?” the man said.

“A copy of a page from the historic county register.”

Reggie had worked miracles on the original book. The copy in Lindy’s hand showed the exact same page Ax had seen at the library the day before, exact same cramped writing in a clerk’s hand from the 1800s, only now there was more of it, old paragraphs moved up and out of the way for the new ones Reggie inserted.

Lindy read the document, and then showed it to Jorgos.

“As you see, Drayhome provided the lands to build Breens Mist in exchange for a strict hands-off. No taxes are ever to be levied on this estate. We are to remain free of county interference, its enforcement of any code or ordinance to which we do not agree. In addition, the provision at the bottom of the page prohibits any form of eminent domain or expropriation of this property. Violate any of the terms of the agreement and every acre on which Breens Mist sits reverts to us.”