Home for a Spell (20 page)

Liss’s Lexus had been giving her fits for as long as I had known her. For such a lovely luxury vehicle, it had come with more than its share of problems.

“What kind of car are you going to look for?” I asked her.

“I have no idea. Perhaps I shall let it find me instead,” she replied with an airy wave of her hand. “Just like your new home will find you.” And she smiled. Knowingly.

Well, I had no idea how that would work, but I knew enough about Liss that it would all the same. Just. Like. Magick.

Marcus came to pick me up just then, so I said my good-byes and left to go off and do a little magick of my own.

I was silent most of the trip home, my mind full of the events of the day.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

“Hm?” I glanced up to discover that we had pulled up to the curb, and the truck motor had been switched off. “Oh. We’re home.”

“Uh-huh. At least I am. I think you’ve been somewhere else, though.”

I smiled at him. “I guess I have.”

“Worrying?”

“Maybe.”

But he knew me better than that. “Worrying, definitely. I thought I told you not to do that,” he teased.

“I know, I know,” I groaned. “I can’t seem to help myself. Liss and I had a chat about it today, too. Lending energy and focus to negative things. I’m going to try harder not to do that. I know it just makes matters worse. Sometimes the execution is more difficult than the good intentions.” I glanced over at him shyly. “Marcus . . .”

“Maggie . . .” he said, the lilt in his voice meant to lighten the air. But I had something to say, and I needed to be sure he heard me.

“I really want you to go back to finish up your degree as planned,” I blurted.

“I know you do.”

“And I’m really afraid that I’m messing that up for you. Because of”—I reached down and rapped my knuckles on my flamboyant cast—“
this
. Stupid bad luck and bad timing.”

He took off his sunglasses and sighed. “I know. It’s no big deal for me to postpone it a little while,” he said, taking my hand, “because I know myself and I know it really is only a temporary deferral. But . . . it seems to mean a lot to you—”

“It does,” I said quickly.

“—so . . . I give you my word, Magpie, we’ll find a way so that I can start classes Monday as previously planned. All right?”

“All right.” And I knew he meant it, which meant the world to me. “I’m not sure how, but I know if anyone can make this work out, you can. I, uh”—I felt a blush heating my cheeks—“I even talked to Liss about it. She recommended a Home Finding Spell to bring the perfect place my way. I have the stuff for it right here.” I patted my handbag, which I’d been holding protectively against me.

He raised an eyebrow, and a slight smile touched one corner of his mouth. “You’re willing to go the spell route? Wow. This must be serious.”

I made a face. “You aren’t the only one who can spell.”

“Evidently.”

“And besides, it isn’t for anything dire, something I could fumble,” I explained further, “with my shortage of experience.”

“Well, why don’t we take your . . .
stuff . . .
inside and work it together? If that’s okay with you.”

Okay? It was more than okay.

He came around and helped me inside, carrying my things for me. As we crossed the porch, it hit me all of a sudden just how much had happened in the last twenty-four hours. It felt more like days. “Wow.”

Marcus, who had been in front of me, nudging open the screen door with his elbow, tossed a saucy grin over his shoulder. “Thanks. I try.”

I giggled. “Not you.”

“Oh. Break my heart. No, don’t worry. The crumbling edifice of my ego will recover. Eventually.”

“I’ll be the first to admit, you’re pretty wow, too. But I was thinking about the day,” I said as I clumped my way through the door he held for me and across the threshold. Minnie came running around the corner, meowing up a storm, and wound her way around my feet and crutches. I stopped so that I wouldn’t trip over her and reached down to scratch her behind the ears.

“Why don’t you go sit down and put your feet up—doctor’s orders,” he said when I made a face, “and I’ll pour us some iced tea.”

I had to admit, putting my casted foot up high on a pile of pillows and leaning back felt really, really good. Much better than I would have thought before Danny laid down the law. Maybe the good doctor did know what he was talking about. Who woulda thunk it? And it was even better when Minnie launched her fat little body up onto the sofa, pranced all over my prone and inert figure, and then settled herself down on my chest, purring in my face with her eyes closed blissfully. Aw. The little rascal missed me.

“Hey!” Marcus protested when he came around the corner with two glasses of tea. “She took my resting spot.”

“I guess you two will just have to work out a schedule,” I told him, laughing.

He set the tea down on a coaster on the glass tabletop and then brought me my bag. “In case you want to set up on the table.”

I took out the bag of goodies Liss had sent home with me, as well as the piece of paper that stated my wishes. After asking me about a candle, Liss had decided to assume I wouldn’t have one at my fingertips and had included a small white votive in with the rest. Marcus slid the table closer to me so that I wouldn’t have to reach so far. I opened the bag to take things out, but Marcus said, “Hang on,” and went off down the hallway, returning a moment later with a silky cloth that he spread out over the glass surface of the coffee table. “Altar cloth,” he explained when I turned questioning eyes upon him.

“Oh.” A thought occurred to me suddenly. I cleared my throat. “Um, Marcus?”

“Hm?”

“Where do you usually work when you cast your spells?” I asked shyly, tilting my head to gaze at him sideways.

“Actually,” he said, spreading the silken scarf over the table before placing the bag of goodies on top of it for me, “I honestly don’t cast very many spells.”

I blinked. I wasn’t expecting that. “Really?”

He laughed at my surprise. “Really. I guess I just don’t see the need to. Most of the time I feel that I’m perfectly capable of bringing things about on my own or with the help of my Guides. And with a certain level of patience.”

“Patience is something I’m not always good at,” I admitted.

“Sometimes casting spells comes off as pushing the issue or trying to control the outcome of things, in my mind, when most of the time a simple heart-to-heart with your Guides can do so much more. Just sitting back and letting them do their thing on your behalf,” he told me with a shrug. “I like to let them take the wheel and see where they’ll take me.”

“Like with me?”

His smile was enigmatic enough to rival the Mona Lisa’s. “Maybe.”

“Well, did you ask them about me or not?” I persisted.

“That,” he said, leaning in and kissing me on the nose, “is for me to know and for you to forget about.”

“You did!” I laughed. “You did. Admit it.” And then I sobered. “Poor Tom. He never had a chance, did he?”

Marcus finished setting out the spell components on the cloth but said nothing. He didn’t need to. We both knew the answer to that. Tom and I, we were just not meant to be. We were too different. He was
Law & Order
, and I was
Practical Magic
. His days were all
C.S.I.
, and mine were
Bewitched
. He thought all psychics were Miss Cleo, and I wanted to learn to bend spoons like Uri Geller. He thought Stony Mill was Mayberry born again and was dreadfully confused by the reality that it wasn’t, and I was beginning to think Stony Mill and Eastwick were next-door neighbors, and when the Devil finally decided to poke his head out of the shadows and let the rest of us see him for what he truly is, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be around. We were different.

Different people. Different priorities. Different worlds. Except now his world was crashing up against mine, and now my problems were becoming his problems and his problems were becoming my problems, and that, my friends, was not good. For any of us.

“What are you asking for in a home?” Marcus asked me.

“Oh, you know. Just a place to call my own that is
not
in a basement and has plenty of natural light, allows pets, is safe, very affordable, close to you”—he smiled at that—“and has a good feeling to it. You know. Nice.”

“You could stay here,” he suggested.

I smiled, a little sadly. “We talked about the reasons why—”

“But we didn’t talk about alternatives that would allow us both to do what we need to do and get done what we need to get done.”

“What . . . alternatives?” I was trying not to get too excited. Sometimes it was better not to get your hopes up too soon.

“Well, I talked to Liss on my way to pick you up—”

“You did?” It must have been before she and I gathered spell components, because Marcus had arrived just as we were finishing up.

“—and she knows how opposed you are to getting in the way of my continued education . . . even though you aren’t—”

I waited, raising my eyebrows to urge him on and wondering how this was going to play out.

“—so, Liss suggested that she could drive you to and from work for as long as it takes you to get your cast off and drive again.”

The little dickens! She hadn’t said a word! No wonder she was acting so pleased with herself while gathering up all the herbs and things. She knew the spell wasn’t going to be necessary. A spell that worked in advance of even working it . . . it didn’t get any better than that. Negative reaction time. Awesome. I hoped her car spell worked just as well. Not to mention the protection ritual. That one was especially important, as far as I was concerned.

“Liss,” I said, “is incredibly closed mouthed when she wants to be.”

He grinned. “She is at that.”

“So . . .”

“So, what do you think?” he asked, letting his excitement for the prospect bubble over.

“Is she
sure
?” I asked him, worrying. “I mean, I know she probably thinks nothing of it, but I don’t want to be a burden to anyone, let alone my boss, and . . . oh, gosh . . . it would solve a lot of problems, wouldn’t it?”

“So that’s a yes, then?”

“That’s a . . . maybe . . . I have to talk to Liss first. I have to know,
for sure
, that it won’t be putting her out.”

He just smiled at me. Knowingly. As knowingly as Liss had earlier. And then he kissed me, and I forgot what I was so worried about.

The doorbell rang, breaking into the momentary reverie. I sighed as his lips left mine and grumbled, “Darned door-to-door salespeople.”

Marcus rose to his feet and peeked past the curtain on the front window, where video camera equipment still pointed outward, even though it had been weeks since the last time he’d thought he saw anyone—meaning Tom or his cronies—scoping out the house. What can I say? We’d both been a bit too preoccupied to bother ourselves putting it away. “Uh-oh.”

Uh-oh?

He went to the door and yanked it open. “Well, well. Look who it is.”

Standing just outside, his finger raised toward the doorbell as though he had been about to ring it again, was your favorite police officer and mine, Tom Fielding, in all his aviator-sunglassed glory.

My mind was having a hard time wrapping around what I was seeing. Why would Tom be standing at Marcus’s front door?

Tom gave a self-important little cough to clear his throat and took off his sunglasses, tucking them into the collar of his white tee. He was doing his best to appear official, and yet there was an air of uncertainty to him, a self-consciousness that niggled along my emotional pathways, making me feel a little nervous as well. “I have a few questions to ask you, and I was hoping this would be a good time.” And then his gaze traveled down to Marcus’s bare feet before drifting past him to see me, relaxing supine on the sofa, and his uncertainty hardened perceptibly.

Oh, snap.

There was something about the appearance of a man’s bare feet that to me felt somehow . . . intimate. I couldn’t help wondering if Tom was thinking that same thing. Especially when paired with me, lolling about on the sofa with a distinct lack of lip gloss. My hand flew to my hair, hoping it was at least presentable.

I sat up a little straighter. Or, as straight as the soft cushions and pillows would allow.

A glower settled in between Tom’s brows. He snapped his gaze back toward Marcus, who appeared to be mulling over the statistical probability of success of turning Tom summarily away.

Yeah, I didn’t think it would work, either.

All he could do was grit his teeth and reluctantly open the door a little bit wider. “By all means, come on in, make yourself at home.”

Tom stepped over the threshold with all the enthusiasm of a man who knows he has a job to do and it’s not going to be pleasant. His hands flexed around the edges of a bulky expandable file folder he was transferring back and forth between his hands.

“Hi, Tom.”

He didn’t look at me. He just waved the folder in my general direction.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

I heard the thought, plain as day. But did I imagine it or project it on him? Or was it real?

I’d never know, because there was no way I was about to ask him.

Marcus closed the door, and I could tell by the tension in his shoulders that he felt as though he’d just invited the enemy to sit down to a friendly meal. He came to stand next to me, his thumbs catching hold of his belt and hooking there as he eyed Tom, who still hadn’t taken a seat and was standing next to the armchair on the opposite side of the coffee table.

Obviously it was up to me to break the ice. For my own sake. “Marcus, why don’t you get Tom a glass of iced tea?” I suggested pleasantly.