Destruction: The December People, Book One (25 page)

“Did your mother have a real talisman?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

“It was me.”

She nodded.

“So, I left her unprotected.”

“Yeah, but it was her fault. She even set up spells to make it harder for you to find us. Even after she realized you were her talisman. Even after she knew you could fix everything. She kept trying to make her talisman into something else.”

Evangeline looked down at her picture. She blinked a few extra times, as if she might cry, but her eyes stayed dry.

“Last March, when we were in town one day, Xavier stole someone’s phone. It had Internet on it. He wanted to know everything Mom had ever told me about you so he could look for you. He knew your name but not much else. But we didn’t know how to use the Internet then, and the phone stopped working at our house anyway. Later, Xavier tried to find you with a spell. I don’t know what it was exactly; he wouldn’t tell me because he didn’t want me to try. I don’t know where he learned it or if he made it up, but it was supposed to bring you to us.”

She leaned over her knees and stared at her sandaled feet. She had painted her toenails silver.

“My mom deserved to die.”

David thought for a while before he spoke. He put his hand on her shoulder. “She was a good person when I knew her.”

David pulled the box of Crystal’s ashes out of his jacket. He lay down on the uneven sofa bed mattress in his office and held Crystal to his chest. If anyone walked in, he would get caught cuddling with a dead woman. Especially abhorrent, since he should be trying to save his marriage with his living one. He closed his eyes and felt her weight on his chest. She moved up and down as he breathed. He felt better.

“You believed in ghosts,” he said. “Couldn’t you be one for a minute? Come back to me. Tell me what to do.”

Like a child, he waited, as if she really might appear there. He watched the ceiling fan spin in a mundane, non-magical way. The clock ticked. The computer whirred.

It did work… sort of. He fell asleep and dreamed about her. For some unknowable reason, his subconscious put her at The Galleria, a place she had never set foot and would never want to. She waited for him in front of the ice rink with the domed glass ceiling. She leaned against the railing and watched him approach her with one of her patented poker faces. But, as she watched him approach, the edges of her lips turned upward ever so slightly and her eyes opened a little wider.

“I’m sorry, Crystal.”

She stared at him.

“I know it doesn’t help, but I still love you. You saved my marriage by cutting me out. I wouldn’t have been able to stay away from you forever.”

She still said nothing but gave a long, slow blink, like an acknowledgement.

“Our children are really amazing. They’re beautiful. I’m glad I get to know them now.”

Another blink. A longer one.

“Why won’t you speak to me?”

Her eyes gazed downward, then back up. She looked like a statue that could move only her eyes. He moved close to her. He feared touching her, as he feared to touch their children, afraid anything he did could hurt her. He touched his forehead to hers. The contact animated her slightly. He heard her breathe.

“Evangeline drew me a picture of your wings. Can I see them?”

He pulled back from her and waited. At first, he thought nothing would happen, but then she pulled her tank top over her head. She pulled her shoulders back and raised her chin, as if she wanted him to know she had no shame in showing her naked breasts. Then it happened. Two massive black wings spread out behind her, twice her height. Her wingspan rivaled a California condor’s. He reached his hands out to them.

“May I?”

An infinitesimal nod. He ran his fingers across the smooth feathers. They weren’t black. Not really. Each feather had the sheen of a different color. Blue. Red. Orange. Green. Yellow. Violet. The feathers fell around his fingers like water. She was gone.

mmy came home on December 10th. The doctors said she healed well. Fast. She said she would recover quickly, and she did, as if she could somehow will her bones back together.
Who knew what was possible anymore?
She wore a cast on her arm and a brace on her knee. She couldn’t do much but insisted on walking into the house on her own two feet. David and Jude walked on either side of her, ready to catch her if she stumbled, and she kept swatting their arms away.

“I can walk,” she screamed at Jude as he grabbed her elbow to help her over the threshold. “Let me go.”

“Whoa,” she said when she entered the house. “It’s just as bad inside.”

Christmas had hit the Vandergraff home with the subtlety of a tidal wave. Amanda had coated the outside of the house with Christmas lights. And not just the house. Every branch of every tree. She even ran strings of lights along the ground. She had placed two Nativity scenes in the lawn, a giant cross formed out of Christmas lights, and a blow-up Santa Claus with all eight reindeer.

The inside of the house looked the same. Green garlands wrapped around everything. The whole house twinkled. A twelve-foot tree. A creepy dancing Santa on the dining table. Five more small Nativity scenes. David had seen Xavier and Patrick playing a ‘count the baby Jesuses game. According to Patrick, counting both pictures and figurines, they had twelve baby Jesuses on the property, and they hadn’t done a full search yet. Apparently, new ones showed up every day.

Amanda had multiple Christmas candles burning, and the smell of chemically contrived pine trees made it hard to breathe. Trans-Siberian Orchestra played throughout the day, and Amanda had made about two hundred Christmas cookies that probably would give David diabetes. Apparently, Amanda thought she could attack dark magic with a relentless onslaught of Christmas.

Samantha and Jude plastered themselves onto Emmy like wings all day. David and Amanda could hardly pry Samantha off Emmy long enough to talk to her, but they did manage to catch Samantha doing laundry alone in the afternoon. David didn’t know someone could excel at something as ordinary as laundry, but Samantha did. She folded clothes as if she worked at The Gap, and everything came out cleaner than new and smelled of springtime. If she used some kind of laundry magic, he wouldn’t stop her.

She looked at them serenely, but David didn’t miss the hint of fear in her eyes. She put down a towel and folded her hands in front of her in a docile way. He didn’t like her looking at him that way. They had had a “talk” with her about teaching Emmy a dangerous spell which had made her melt like a popsicle in August. She cried silently and didn’t say anything besides, “I’m sorry.”

Apparently, a “talk” with Amanda and David Vandergraff amounted to the worst kind of torture, although David pegged Amanda as the scary one. In the end, David wanted to apologize to
her
, but Amanda appeared unaffected by the display of emotion. She stayed firm but not cruel, and quite clear. No magic.

“Do you want to sit down with us in the dining room for a minute?” Amanda asked.

“You’re not in trouble,” David added.

Samantha nodded politely and floated, as she always did, into the dining room.

“We have found a good private investigator,” David said. At least, not one of the three different PIs who had failed to find Crystal and his kids. So, no strikes against him yet. “Unless… this may be a strange question… but you don’t know where we could find a wizard private investigator? Perhaps it would help if they had all the facts.”

“No, I don’t know about anything like that.”

“David, I told you,” Amanda said. “You can’t Google ‘Wizard PI’ and expect to find something.”

“That’s why I’m asking her,” he said.

“Do you know how many wizards there are in the world? Even if there are wizard PIs, what are the chances she knows one?”

“Okay,” he said. “Anyway, Samantha, it would be helpful to know more about the people your parents know. Do you have other family?”

He treaded carefully here; he didn’t want her to read between the lines and realize they wanted to find her real guardians… just in case.

“My Grandma, my dad’s mom. She lives in a nursing home in Baytown. You could talk to her, but she’s pretty confused. She would probably say she saw my dad yesterday even if she hadn’t.”

“And your other grandparents?”

“Dead.”

David wondered whether or not he should change his retirement plan based on the apparently shorter life expectancy of a wizard.

“Sorry,” David said.

“My dad is an only child, but my mom has two sisters. She hasn’t spoken to my Aunt Irene for as long as I can remember, but she does get along with my Aunt Charlotte. I see her a couple times a year.”

“Can you write down their full names?” Amanda asked, passing her a piece of paper. “And addresses or phone numbers.”

“Aunt Charlotte lives in New Orleans, but I don’t know where. My mom is from Nevada, and she said Aunt Irene stayed there. Las Vegas. But who knows now.”

“Friends?” Amanda asked.

“My mom is in a coven with some other women. I already called all of them. They don’t know where she is. But they are casting incantations to help find her and bring her back. They would be happy to help, I’m sure, but they won’t talk to a human PI.”

“I suppose we could call them,” David said. “Would they talk to us?”

“Maybe, but I doubt they would tell you anything they didn’t tell me.”

“Does her coven know what spell it was… that they couldn’t stop?” Amanda asked.

“No. But they had a few ideas. They said my Mom had been damaged by dark magic and went to them for help. They said they thought they healed her, but maybe whatever it was came back and she tried to fix it on her own.”

A prickle ran up David’s neck. Amanda didn’t react. They both knew the dark magic had come from him, when he had accidentally deflected her spell.

“Samantha, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need to,” David said. “But hopefully we’ll find them soon. Who knows, maybe even by Christmas.”

“Or December 21st,” Samantha said.

“Okay… that seems like as good a day as any,” David said.

“It’s the Winter Solstice, David,” Amanda said. “It’s an important wizard holiday.”

“Oh. Sure.”