Bedroom Eyes (32 page)

“Thank the stars, yes.”

“You’re welcome,” Alistair murmured, thinking of the supplies he’d bundled up to help her out of her miscast spell, but the comment was lost on Mrs. Merlin. “So am I to understand that you have not stuck to your word to practice only the simplest of candle magick’s applications?” He didn’t know why he wasted his breath asking that question; clearly she had called for yet another rescue operation.

“Well. . .”

“Yes?” He tried to sound stem, but pulling that trick with someone the same age as his own grandmother was pretty hard for him to do.

“Not exactly. But I meant well.”

Alistair swapped hands with the phone and the exerciser. “Let’s try to get to the point, then, hmmm?”

She laughed, a nervous sound that hummed along the phone line like a rattler gathering itself to strike. “If only I could! But I don’t even know what’s happened to Penelope. She helped me get back to myself, and then, well, Mr. Gotho, you may find this hard to believe—”

“Try me.” From Mrs. Merlin, he’d believe almost anything.

“Hold your horses. I’m telling this story. As I was saying, you may find this hard to believe, but once I was back home safe and sound and back to size, and shape, thank you very much, my cat had disappeared.”

Alistair nodded. The cat easily could have run off. He glanced longingly at his gym bag, only to be snapped back to attention when Mrs. Merlin spoke again.

“Yet his collar was wrapped around the candle on my altar.”

“Any idea where he might be?”

“None. But I must find him.”

“Anything else?” He asked, to give himself time to think as much as out of curiosity.

“Well, there is one more little problem.”

He should have known. He waited for her to make a clean breast of the mix-up.

“Penelope’s shoes are here, too, next to the collar.”

“The ones she wore when she assisted you with your retum-to-body spell?”

Silence answered him. He waited, then finally repeated his question.

“What’s-a-matter? Couldn’t you see me nodding?”

Alistair shook his head. “Can you see that?”

“Of course not, but you have powers I can’t begin to imagine ever possessing.”

“And you’ll never even come close if you keep confusing the heavens and clouding your karma.” That time he did manage a tone of severity. “You know you’ve endangered an innocent woman and an innocent feline by your hurly-scurly rush into spells you’ve no business attempting.”

“Oh, I know, Mr. Gotho!” Her voice wailed at him over the line. “And I promise, if you help me correct this one, I’ll never ever do it again.”

He didn’t even ask her to swear to that promise on the nose of the goddess. He’d only be wasting his breath.

He was about to speak when she came out with, “There is one other little detail I’d be remiss not to clarify.”

“Remiss?” Alistair wondered where this grandmother from Gentilly had acquired her vocabulary. Better not to ask, though. “And what is that?”

“I didn’t just try once to unmix things—”

“You didn’t perform two spells!” Alistair slapped his forehead. Mrs. Merlin had really done it this time.

“I do remember you said that once a spell goes awry, it’s best not to tinker with it, but I did think surely I could get Mr. M back.”

“I think,” Alistair said, trying not to grind his teeth, “I’d better come straight over.”

“Oh, would you do that?” Mrs. Merlin’s voice perked right up. “I’ll set out some bread pudding I just happen to have in the freezer and put on a pot of coffee.”

Alistair shook his head, then said, “Why don’t you do that?” Anything to keep the woman from lighting another candle. “I’ll be right over.”

Tony figured he must have passed the cat’s safety inspection, because suddenly the large orange feline quit hanging back and walked straight toward the porch. Tony had always liked cats, but since his old tom Bruno died last year, and Kathy had moved out with the two kittens, he hadn’t adopted another one.

“You lost or just new to the neighborhood?” Tony asked in a low voice, gently reaching a hand out to the cat. “Hey, you look just like Bruno.”

The cat halted on the step beside his feet, then lifted its head up.

Tony stared at the cat’s eyes. They were the most amazing blue, deep and glowing. The cat meowed and Tony stroked it lightly on the top of its head. It seemed to like that as it moved closer and rubbed against his leg.

He’d never seen eyes that color on a cat. The cobalt blue was the same shade as Penelope’s eyes, and they were unusually rare and beautiful even in a human. Stroking the cat’s head and back gently, he propped his chin on the other hand and wondered what she was doing.

Probably at work, too busy to think of Tony Olano, the man who’d stolen her virginity and then pushed her away. He’d been on his way back to the corner basketball court to work out his frustrations.

To his surprise, the cat hopped onto his lap.

“Friendly, aren’t you?” Smoothing his hand over the cat’s silky fur, Tony couldn’t help but think of Penelope’s satiny skin, and of the way she’d purred under his touch when they’d made love.

He’d seen the hint of fire in her eyes, sensed that under her starchy exterior lay a woman of passion, and yesterday’s lovemaking had only confirmed that. How she had remained a virgin as long as she had, he couldn’t understand. Were the other men she’d met blind?

“Meowwwwww.” The cat cried plaintively and butted its head against his hand.

Tony realized his hand had stopped. “Greedy little thing, aren’t you?” His hand went back to petting the cat, his mind to picturing Penelope. Trouble was, the more he thought of her, the more excited he got. He found it hard to believe he’d actually mustered the will to have been so cruel to her yesterday with his “nooner” line. But he’d had to hurt her enough to keep her away from him. For her own safety.

The cat had started purring and kneading its paws just above Tony’s knees. Fortunately the cat didn’t have front claws.

Tony ran one finger under the cat’s jaw, scratching the narrow edge of its chin, remembering Hinson saying that Penelope was to be his wife. Did she intend to marry Hinson? His hand stilled as an alarming idea came to him. Had Penelope lied? Was she playing some game with him and Hinson, the way she played at shoplifting?

The cat stopped its paw massage and turned its head to look at him.

Staring into those blue eyes, eyes so weirdly similar to Penelope’s, Tony almost felt like the cat was trying to answer his question.

“So she’s innocent? That’s your vote?”

The cat meowed and ran its tongue over his finger. The soft, sandpapery effect tickled slightly and made Tony wish he was holding Penelope on his lap and lapping at her body in exactly the same way.

He’d start with her ear, circling the incredibly soft skin of her lobe, then dart in with his tongue, just enough to tease her into one of those gaspy moans she’d made so often yesterday.

The cat settled onto his lap, purring loudly. At least someone was getting some satisfaction, he thought, shifting his position on the porch, aching to feel Penelope beneath him.

Stroking under its chin, he realized that buried in the fuzzy fur was a delicate silver chain circling the cat’s neck. Gently, he worked it around to see if it held an identification tag. As tame and friendly as the cat was to Tony, a complete stranger, this animal surely belonged to someone and had merely strayed from home.

“Not that I wouldn’t mind keeping you, kitty,” Tony murmured, as he turned over a miniature silver oval.

Fine prickles ran up the back of his neck as he stared at the engraved
P
on the silver pendant, a pendant exactly like the one Penelope wore.

“I hope you realize how terribly complicated it is to undo things when you’ve created this degree of transmutation,” Alistair Gotho said in a stem voice as he held open the door to the Vieux Carré District police station for Mrs. Merlin.

“There’s no need to lecture,” Mrs. Merlin replied, pausing to close the purple umbrella she carried as a sunshade.

“No, I suppose not,” he murmured, knowing full well that even though she claimed to listen to his advice, she always acted on the impulse of the moment.

A group of tourists in shorts and T-shirts emblazoned with French Quarter motifs trundled out the open door of the station, which also served as a clearinghouse for tourist information.

By the time they passed, Mrs. Merlin had her umbrella under control and the two of them entered, Mrs. Merlin muttering under her breath what sounded like, “We’ve got to hurry.”

She’d insisted they go straight to the police station nearby on Royal Street to locate Tony Olano, saying she felt it in her bones that it was the thing to do. Find this man Tony and we’ll find Mr. M and Penelope, Mrs. Merlin had informed him, pretty much all in one breath.

Alistair favored a more studied approach to the issue. He failed to see why the confusions in Mrs. Merlin’s spell should necessarily involve Olano. But, despite Mrs. Merlin’s habit of getting herself into magickal jams, she had an unerring sixth sense about certain essences.

So he’d followed along; once they had the necessary data, someone had to perform the spell of retroactivity.

Someone who was qualified.

Out of a well-developed instinct to expect the unexpected where Mrs. Merlin was concerned, before he’d left his shop, Alistair had grabbed his portable magick kit that he kept packed for emergencies.

“What do you mean you’ve never heard of Anthony Olano?” Mrs. Merlin was waving her folded umbrella like a baton at the potbellied officer kicked back behind the reception desk.

The man hooked his thumbs in his gun belt. “He used to be a cop.”

“Aha!” She stabbed the air. “And you said you’d never heard of him. Caught you on that one. Now, be a good boy and tell me how to find him. It’s a matter of life and death.”

He lifted his eyebrows. Clearly he thought Mrs. Merlin was cut from the same cloth as Ruthie the Duck Lady, a recently-diseased Quarter eccentric who locals made excuses for and tourists fed quarters to.

“Don’t make me call a lawyer. The only one I know is . . .” she stumbled, then came up with, “Hinson. And you don’t want him after you.”

The officer eyed her sourly, not reacting either to the name or the threat. “If you’re looking for someone, why not try the phone book?”

Alistair’s thoughts exactly. He stepped forward. “Thank you, officer,” he said, then placed a hand lightly on Mrs. Merlin’s elbow. “Why don’t we—”

She smacked him across the knuckles, thankfully with her hand and not with the umbrella. Glaring up at him, she said in the same voice his grandmother used to use when she caught him scraping pralines off the waxed paper before they were set, “Don’t be impertinent. When I’ve gotten what I’ve come for, then I’ll leave.”

Alistair dropped his hand. The officer grinned, then wiped that grin from his face as she turned back to him.

Just then, another officer, half the age and a third of the girth of the guy behind the desk, approached from the back of the room. Ignoring the potbellied officer, he said, “Let me get this straight. The two of you are looking for Olano
and
Hinson?”

Something in the way the officer combined the two names set Alistair on alert, though he had no idea what role Hinson played in Mrs. Merlin’s mix-up, if any.

Mrs. Merlin stared at the officer and nodded. “That’s close enough,” she said.

The officer opened the wooden half-door leading to the back of the station. “I think you should come in the back with me. I’ll see what I can find out for you.”

“Well, thank the stars!” Mrs. Merlin peered at the man’s name tag. “Steve, is it?” She swept past the potbellied man, pausing only long enough to show him her nose in the air.

The guy didn’t look too impressed. He did scratch his head and point to the sign that said
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL OR PRISONERS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT,
and stared oddly at Steve, which added to Alistair’s impression that Mrs. Merlin might have thanked the stars prematurely.

Chapter 23

Penelope had followed Tony into his house and now sat on all fours, watching with interest as he started pulling pots and pans from the cupboard and various items from the refrigerator.

The way he collected things on the counter, then studied them, reminded her of her own cooking style. Finding this compatible trait in the man with bedroom eyes pleased her enormously.

Discovering that he knew his way around a kitchen had been her first pleasant surprise. The room was small, of less size than her apartment’s kitchen, but cheery. Penelope swiveled her head around, taking in the white walls, green and white curtains, the white eat-in table with two chairs, both covered in cushions that matched the window coverings.

To get to the kitchen, she’d followed Tony down a narrow hallway to the back of the house. Along the way, she’d gotten the tiniest peek into the rooms leading off the hallway. Living room, bedroom, and bath, she’d decided. Small but cozy.

Penelope longed to explore each room. Watching Tony chopping Roma tomatoes, she wondered if her curiosity had increased since she’d taken on the shape and substance of a cat, or whether her curiosity arose from being secretly in Tony’s home, free to explore whatever her heart desired.

What a way to get to know a man, Penelope mused, licking one front paw and considering the possibilities. Perhaps Mrs. Merlin had been trying to help her and had whipped up this spell on purpose.

No, that reasoning didn’t fly. Penelope shook her head. But as long as she was here, she might as well make the most of it. Adventure, here I come, she thought, and crossed the floor to Tony.

Butting her chin gently against his muscular leg, she instinctively left her scent on him.

Tony lay down his knife. “Trying to tell me you’re hungry?”

Penelope blinked. Much more interested in Tony, she hadn’t considered food. But now that he mentioned it. . . she meowed politely.

He leaned down and stroked the top of her head with the back of his hand.