A Little Night Magic (6 page)

I wrenched my arm from his grip and took a step toward the street, but he blocked me, and so I ended up stepping farther back into the shadows of the alley.

“Are you Olivia Ford?”

“No,” I said.

He advanced on me, and I stepped farther back into the alley.

“Was your father Gabriel Ford?” he asked.

“Far as I know, he was Some Guy Named Dave.” I stepped back and my thigh hit the metal trash bin. “I’m leaving now. Touch me again, and I’ll scream.”

He held up his hands, but I could see annoyance and tension on his face, and it was not comforting. “I just want to talk to you.”

“Sure, because men pull women into alleys all the time just to talk.” I glanced around and thought,
What would Stacy Easter do?
Puke on his shoes, probably. Not much of a help. Then I caught the trash cans in the corner of my eye, and I pulled the lid off one and held it between us like a shield. “Stay back.”

The guy advanced on me another foot, which freaked me out a bit because while I was okay acting like I would hit him with the lid, I wasn’t entirely sure
how
I was going to hit him with it. Straight-on in the face, I guessed. Maybe? While I had the standard waitress’s upper body strength, I sadly lacked the standard waitress’s thirst for blood.

“Put that damn thing down so we can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk to you. I’ve had a very bad day, and I just want to
go home
!” I waggled the lid in front of me, trying to look threatening, but I probably just looked like an insane, drunken waffle waitress who had stepped tragically out of her element.

That was when I noticed how hot the trash can lid felt in my hands. I glanced up to see if maybe there was a ray of sunlight on it or something, but we were in the complete shade of the alley. I shook my head and tried to focus. “Get out of my way!”

“Not until I get some answers,” he said, shaking his head slowly, and freaking me out even more. The lid handle was getting hotter, and the tingling in my hand was getting worse, making my arm shake, which made the lid shake.

“I’m looking for a—” His expression went from irritation to slight concern. “You okay?”

Ow.
The heat in my hand was beginning to hurt, and I felt a little dizzy.

“I’m fine,” I said, catching my breath. “Why?”

“You look like you’re going to vomit.”

“It’s not out of the question.” I whipped the lid up, but my arms were so weak and tingly that it just kind of wobbled in my hands. The lid wavered a little in the air and I tried to steady it. “Now get out of my way.”

“I just need to ask you if—”

I didn’t hear anything he said after that; the tingling heat in my fingers escalated into an electric buzz running up my arms and into my shoulders that distracted me too much. I could almost feel it in my teeth. What the hell was up with this damn lid? Was it electric or something? I tried to tighten my hold on the handle as best I could, but then … I don’t know if it was the glare of the sun bouncing off nearby windows or what, but despite the shade, something that looked like electrically charged strings of yellow light danced over my hands, and spread out to the rest of the lid, and I screamed and dropped it to the ground with a clang.

Only when it hit the ground, it … changed. Slowly, the lid curved into a saddle shape, the metal creaking loudly and little sparks of yellow light shooting out of it as it morphed. It rolled around on its … back, I guess … for a second, and four short legs squealed out of the edge of the lid. Then, under its own power, it righted itself onto its feet and a short, straight stub of a tail formed at the side facing me. At the side facing the guy, the shape of the top of a terrier-looking dog head formed and then it sort of … well, for lack of a better term, I’ll say it
growled
at the guy, although that could have been the sound of the mutating aluminum. I don’t know. I’ve never heard aluminum mutate before. Apparently, neither had the guy, because he jumped back a bit, staring down at the thing.

Do you believe in magic?
I heard Davina’s voice say to me from the far reaches of the night before.

No,
I thought back at her.

The aluminum dog growled again, going for the guy.

“Son of a bitch,” the guy grunted, stepping back. That’s when the dog jumped up into the air, heading for the guy’s kneecaps. The guy darted to the side, and in the air, in midjump, the thing turned back into a lid, and it landed on one edge on the asphalt. We both stared at it for a moment as it wobbled like a twirling coin until it finally stopped, flat and dead and still on the ground.

My voice was weak and strained even to my own ears. “Did that trash can lid just turn into a dog?”

There was a flash of something on his face—anger or terror, I couldn’t tell, the break was so brief—and then his lips tightened together and his face was stone again.

“Yeah.” He swallowed, then met my eyes. “That never happen to you before?”

“Are you asking me if I’ve ever seen a trash can lid turn into a dog before?”

“No,” he said. “I’m asking you if you ever
turned
a trash can lid into a dog before.”

“No,” I said. “That was
you.
”

He stared at me, confusion on his face.

I pointed at the lid and repeated myself. “
You
did that.”

More silence.

“Well, it certainly wasn’t
me,
” I said, my voice almost making it into screech territory as I said the words. My memory flashed on the tingling in my arms, the weird yellow light that had seemed to come from my fingers …

“It wasn’t me,” I said again, trying to sound more forceful, to convince myself. I was almost able to do it. For his part, he just stared at me, seeming just as stunned as I was. After a moment of this odd silence, I remembered that I needed to escape from the crazy guy who just turned a trash can lid into a dog—
it was him, it had to be him
—and I took a few wobbly steps back, and pointed toward the street.

“I’m going to go home now,” I said carefully, “and you’re going to go wherever it is you go, and leave me a—”

“No!” He grabbed my arm, his grip tight on my wrist, hurting me. “I need to know if you’ve seen her.”

“Seen who?”

And right then, seemingly out of nowhere, another trash can lid flew over my shoulder, knocked him in the head, and sent him spiraling against the brick wall, where he hit his head again and went down, out cold.

“Okay, I know I didn’t do
that.
” I turned around, stumbling a bit as my shaking legs tried to hold me up, and I looked into the shadows. “Hello?”

Silence. No one was there. I must have been really drunk, except I didn’t feel that drunk. Maybe none of this was real. Maybe I was hallucinating.

“Oh, god.” I gasped, putting my hand to my mouth, remembering how my mother’s sickness had first presented with an insistence on putting the milk under the sink in the bathroom. “Brain tumor.”

I felt a roiling in my gut, and the next thing I knew, I puked.

Right next to the guy’s work boots.

I’m no Stacy Easter, my ass,
I thought.

The guy grunted as he started to come to. I glanced around, saw no one there, and did the only thing that made sense at the time.

I beat it the hell out of that alley, and ran the rest of the way home.

4

I was naked and dripping wet from the shower when I heard a familiar banging on my bathroom window.

“Goddamnit, Peach,” I muttered, then pulled my fluffy pink polka-dot robe around me and yanked up the blinds just in time to see her pulling her headless broom handle back across the tiny gap between our houses and back into her bathroom. I threw the window open and sat on the radiator.

“We’re not twelve anymore, Peach,” I said. “You can call me on the phone.”

She leaned her elbows on the sill of her open window. “Have you talked to Millie lately? Oh, and I’m out of conditioner.”

“Just a minute.” I reached under my bathroom sink and pulled out the small bag full of hotel toiletries I kept there. I pulled out a little bottle of conditioner and tossed it across the six feet between us; she caught it handily.

“No, I haven’t talked to Millie,” I said. “I’ve been a little distracted since the Confessional. You haven’t talked to her?”

“No,” she said. “And Nick said she hasn’t shown up for work.”

“She’s missed three days of work? Why would she…?” I shot Peach a look. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

Peach gave me an indignant look. “About her being in love with him? No! What kind of friend do you think I am?”

I stared her down for a moment, and she deflated a bit.

“Okay, fine,
yes,
I told him. He’s going to be my husband. We share everything. But I told him not to say anything to her, and he didn’t, I swear. He didn’t get the chance.” She nibbled her lip. “I’ve left, like, ten messages on her phone. She hasn’t called me back. Have you tried to call her?”

“No,” I said, feeling a twinge of guilt. I’d been so wrapped up in my own drama with Tobias that I hadn’t thought much about Millie. Not that there was much real drama with Tobias at the moment; hard to have a lot of drama when you’re pretending the other person doesn’t exist. I’d also used a fair amount of mental energy rationalizing the trash-can-lid dog—tequila causes hallucinations, right?—so I just hadn’t had much left to worry about Millie.

“I’m worried,” Peach said. “Maybe we should go by her house later.”

I grabbed a towel off the rack and scrunched my dripping hair in it. “Good idea. All right, I’m going to go dry my—”

“Why don’t you come over?” she said. “We can go to CCB’s for waffles.”

I sighed. “I can’t. I’ve given up waffles. Just until I get the pudge off. Do you know how many calories are in those things? I think I get contact fat just from serving them.”

She shrugged; Peach had never had to think about calories a day in her life. “Have you talked to Stacy?”

I felt myself stiffen at the mention of her name. “No.”

Peach gave me a sharp look. “You should cut her some slack on that whole thing. It was a long time ago.”

I felt a stab go through me, and I toweled my hair with a little too much vehemence as I said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. I’m not upset.”

“Okay, whatever you say. But she didn’t know how you felt about Tobias back then, and she feels really bad about it.”

I stopped rubbing the towel against my head and stared at Peach. “Oh, please. She does not. Stacy has never felt bad for anything she’s done, ever.” I continued toweling my hair, then stopped again. “And it doesn’t matter anyway, because Tobias is a grown man who can do what he wants. Neither one of them owes me anything. There’s nothing to feel bad about.” I pulled the towel away from my head. My scalp was starting to hurt.

“Well, at any rate, you can’t go to Europe now,” she said carefully.

I raised my head to look at her. “Oh, no? And why is that?”

She stared at me. “The whole group is falling apart. Millie’s upset and none of us know what’s happened to her. You and Stacy are fighting.”

“We’re not fighting,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Look, Millie’s grandmother is dead. Your mom is dead. My parents are in Florida so they might as well be dead. And Stacy’s mom is a nutcase. We’re the only family we all have. You’re going to just leave and let that fall apart?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Is that what this is about? Are you manufacturing drama to keep me here?”

“I’m getting married,” Peach said, her lower lip quivering. “Are you even going to be here for my wedding?”

“Of course, I’ll be here for your wedding,” I said. “They have airports in Europe, you know. Have you picked a date?”

Peach straightened up and stared at me, delivering her statement like a blow. “December twentieth.”

“Wow. That’s fast. But … sure. Okay. I’ll be back for the wedding.”

Her mouth dropped open. “
Back?
You can’t go and come back. Who’s going to help me plan?”

I ticked off my fingers. “Nick. Stacy. Millie. A thousand wedding planners in the regional phone book. And your parents are in Florida, Peach. They’re not dead. You’ve got people.”

“I need
you.
I can’t put on a wedding without you, you’re my oldest friend. You’re the closest thing I have to a sister. You have to stay here until I get married, and then it’s the holidays, and you can’t go then. January and February are too cold, and it’s even worse in Scotland in the winter. We can talk about it again in April.”

“I bought my ticket,” I said. “I leave in August.”

“Get a refund.”

“It’s nonrefundable.”

“I don’t understand why you have to leave all of a sudden like that. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I just…” I thought about explaining it to her, invoking memories of my mother, who used to sit in her garden staring into space for hours. I know he left her on October fifth only because she spent that day crying in her room every year. But I couldn’t tell Peach all this because she wouldn’t allow me to leave her because of a man. Peach was great in a lot of ways, but she would never understand what unrequited love did to you. No one had ever turned Peach down in her life.

“It’s just something I need to do, Peach.”

“Well, I don’t understand
why.
”

I huffed in frustration. “You don’t have to. We’re not family, Peach. We’re neighbors. So just back off.”

Immediately after I said it, I wanted to take it back, but I couldn’t. Silence edged into the space between us as Peach stared down at the ground below, quickly swiping tears away from her cheeks before raising her head to look at me once again.

“I’m only going to get married once, Liv. Europe will always be there.” And with that, she closed her window and left her bathroom.

I sat with the bag of toiletries on my lap, just staring until all the products melded together in a blurred lump in my vision. Peach would come around and apologize later. Millie would be fine, we’d all see to that, and Stacy and I would iron over whatever was tense between us. Tobias and I were already getting back to normal, kind of. The chances were good that by the time I got on that plane, Peach would accept it, too. It was about as likely as a winged unicorn flying over my house and pooping rainbows, but there was a chance.