Magic (27 page)

“Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Wimsey snorted. “After fifty-nine years of dead boredom I finally get a shot at redeeming myself. You pinch it, and the best you can do is tell me you’re sorry? I say, that’s really frightfully inadequate.”

Bryan shrugged helplessly. “Well, what would you have me do?”

Wimsey smiled brightly and patted Bryan’s shoulder. “Do kiss and make up with the girl. There’s a good chap.”

“Rachel?”

“Of course Rachel,” he said irritably. “Who do you think I mean? I’ve been playing cupid for you all along, you ungrateful swine. The least you can do is marry her.”

Bryan sighed. “I’m afraid that’s up to her.”

“Bloody hell,” the ghost murmured, crossing his arms cover his chest. He shook his head. “I’m not cut out for this humanitarian work. Never been comfortable with charitable behavior.” He waved a hand as if to ward off a denial that wasn’t forthcoming. “Oh, yes, I gave the odd quid to Oxfam in my day, but all this—this—
personal
stuff.” He shuddered again, his distaste for his task more than apparent. “All that selflessness goes quite against my grain, I don’t mind saying.”

“Probably has something to do with why you’re here,” Bryan suggested dryly.

“Don’t be glib, Hennessy. It’s really quite irritating.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t tell me, tell Rachel,” he insisted. “Getting the two of you together is my last hope of getting out of here. I did what I could to help her reconcile with Addie, and that didn’t solve my dilemma. You’ve got to be the key. So stop slacking off and do your duty. I’m fed up with being subtle, holding the doors shut and shoving the two of you together. By the way, I was not amused by your little jujitsu demonstration downstairs.”

“Tae kwon do,” Bryan corrected him with a bland smile.

“Don’t split hairs,” Wimsey snapped. “This facetious manner of yours is damned annoying. “Pon my soul, if I were alive, you’d be giving me a roaring headache. Do make up with the girl and get on with it.”

Bryan arched a brow. “Does coercion count in the good-deeds category these days?”

Wimsey screwed up his mouth in annoyance. “You really are too flip by half. Just wait until you get stuck in an alternate plane of existence. We’ll see how amusing you are then.”

Bryan sighed and put on his most contrite look. He wasn’t in the mood for jocularity. Encountering Wimsey had lifted his spirits, but the fact remained, he was losing Rachel. Their difference of philosophy was a wedge between them, and he could see no way over, under, or around it. The next move had to be hers.

“I’m truly sorry, Wimsey. I’ve done all I can. The rest is up to no one but Rachel.”

“That’s what you think,” the ghost muttered darkly.

A knock sounded at the door. Rachel’s voice floated through. “Bryan? Can I come in?”

“Yes.” At least he would get the satisfaction of seeing her face when he introduced her to Wimsey, he thought with a wry smile. He went on folding clothes as she swung the door open and stepped inside the room.

“Who were you talking to?”

He opened his mouth to tell her as he straightened. His gaze went to Rachel’s reflection in the mirror, then his own, then—Wimsey was gone. A black scowl pulled his brows together. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and grumbled, “Myself.”

“Oh.” Rachel looked confused. “That’s funny. I thought I heard another voice.”

“I do that when I’m talking to myself,” he said irritably. “I make up another voice. It makes the conversation seem so much more realistic.”

“That’s kind of odd.”

“I’m an odd person,” he said curtly, snapping his suitcase shut and reaching for another. “What do you expect?”

“I expect you to give me a straight answer,” Rachel said, more than a little irritated by his nasty mood. She’d come there in contrition, after all. The least he could be was polite.

“Fine,” Bryan said, abandoning his packing. “You want a straight answer? I was talking to a ghost. I was talking to a man who was killed in this house fifty-nine years ago. Archibald Wimsey. He was here, but now you can’t see him, so, as we all know, he must not really exist. He’s just a figment of my overactive, irresponsible imagination.”

Rachel winced. “I’m sorry I called you irresponsible. We have different ways of looking at things, you and I. We have different ways of dealing with problems.”

“But I
do
deal with them, Rachel. I don’t just brush them off and expect you to clean up the mess.”

“I know,” she mumbled, head down.

“Do you?” he asked sharply.

She looked up at him, nibbling the corner of her lip. “I’m willing to learn,” she said sincerely. “Are you willing to show me?”

Bryan sighed wearily, his wide shoulders sagging in defeat. “I’ve been trying to show you all along.”

Rachel thought back across the memories she had stored up in the past weeks, memories of Bryan intervening when things had been going badly between herself and Addie, of his silly diversionary tactics that had kept her from dwelling on her problems. She thought of the way he had come back to find the gold for her and to trap Porchind and Rasmussen. If it hadn’t been for him, she probably would have sold Drake House to the pair and been glad to get what little she could for the place.

Bryan had looked out for her all along. He was simply so unorthodox in his methods, she hadn’t realized what he was up to. Still, she had fallen in love with him in spite of his eccentricities, in spite of thinking he was just another hopeless dreamer. Now she loved him even more.

She put her hands on his solid forearms and looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. “I love you, Bryan. You said you needed me to believe in magic. I believe I love you. I believed that even when I was sure you were the last thing I needed in my life. Isn’t that a kind of magic—believing in something even when you think you shouldn’t?”

“I guess so,” he whispered, lifting a hand to brush at the soft, wild tendrils of spun gold that curled around her face. She was so lovely, and he loved her so much, the thought of leaving her was like cutting out his own heart.

“I do need you in my life, Bryan,” she said, leaning closer. “I need you more than all the gold in California. Please don’t leave me.”

As he stared down at her, his blue eyes misty, there was a strange scraping noise in the hall. It sounded suspiciously like heavy furniture being pushed across the floor. Rachel’s eyes rounded as something bumped against the closed door. She snuggled closer to Bryan, her arms sneaking around his lean waist.

“What was that?” she asked weakly.

Bryan smiled and shook his head. “Just someone trying to make sure I don’t leave you.”

She gave him a puzzled look.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, giving in to the powerful longing. “I don’t have any intention of leaving you for the next hundred years or so.”

Rachel’s spirits soared. “You mean that?”

“I do.”

“What about Hungary and Mr. Huntinglodge?”

“Neither one of them is as important to me as you are. Will you marry me, Rachel?” he asked softly.

“I will,” she whispered, tilting her face up to meet his kiss.

His lips were warm and solid against hers, masculine and welcoming, and trembling just enough to bring a lump to her throat. She melted into his arms, never questioning the sensation of coming home. This was where she belonged. This was where she was safe and warm. This was where she wanted to spend the rest of her days—in the arms of a man who brought magic to her life, who lightened every darkness and put a rainbow in her heart.

“I say, good show.”

Rachel bolted in Bryan’s arms, but he held her fast. He raised his head to shoot the intruder a meaningful look. “No show. Beat it, Wimsey.”

“Wimsey?” Rachel asked, goose bumps pebbling her flesh to the texture of sandpaper.

Bryan nodded, tilting his head in the direction of the mirror that hung above the old dresser. Rachel turned and looked. Her mouth dropped open so hard, it was a wonder it didn’t put a dent in her chest.

There he stood—the figment of her mother’s imagination, the whimsy Bryan had refused to give up on, the ghost she didn’t believe in. His image was slightly translucent. He was handsome and smiling, decked out in formal attire. And he was holding a rose.

Her heart skipped a beat as her gaze fastened on the perfect white bud of the flower. Then her eyes went to the eyes of the man who held it. Wimsey nodded in answer to the questions she couldn’t quite force into words. It had been Wimsey all along.

Now he held the rose out toward her. Rachel turned away from the mirror, twisting in Bryan’s arms to face the apparition that stood by the armoire.

“Thank you,” she whispered, taking the flower by the stem.

“Thank you, my dear,” he murmured in return, his pale eyes shining as he handed her the rose.

Then, in a flash of brilliant white light, he was gone.

“Where did he go?” Rachel asked, never once questioning that he had been there.

“Where he belongs,” Bryan said with a soft smile. “Where he belongs.”

“Then we’re alone?”

He nodded.

With a beguiling smile, she wound her arms around his neck. “It seems like now might be a good time for you to start teaching me all about magic.”

“Hmm, yes,” Bryan agreed, his eyes twinkling as he pulled her with him to the bed. They tumbled across the coverlet, laughing and breathless, Rachel’s hair spilling around them like moonlight.

Bryan kissed her cheeks and her eyelids and the corners of her mouth.

“Why don’t we start with making the earth move?” he suggested. “That’s a trick you seem to have a natural aptitude for.”

Rachel grinned and hugged him, loving him with every fiber of her being. He might have been slightly crazy, and he might have been something of a puzzle, but he was all hers, and he would fill her heart with magic every day of her life.

She threaded her fingers through his tawny hair and pulled him down for a long, slow kiss that left him with only one reverent word to say.

“Abracadabra.”

Read on for a preview of
DARK HORSE
the newest thriller
from
New York Times
bestselling author
Tami Hoag

I have never been a fan of organized religion. Early on in my life I came to the conclusion that my spirituality was something uniquely and privately my own, something I could only find deep within a small quiet space in the very center of my being. Some people find that place through meditation or yoga or prayer. I find that place within me when I am on a horse. My Zen religion: the equestrian art of dressage.

Dressage is a discipline born on the battlefield in ancient times. War horses were trained in precision movements to aid their masters in battle, not only to evade enemies, but to attack them. Over the centuries the training went from the battlefield to the show ring, and dressage evolved into something like equine ballet.

To the untrained eye it appears graceful and elegant and effortless. A skilled rider appears to be so quiet, so motionless as to virtually blend into the background. In reality, the sport is physically and mentally demanding on both horse and rider. Complex and complicated. The rider must be attuned to the horse’s every footfall, to the balance of every inch of the horse’s body. The slightest shift of the rider’s weight, the smallest movement of a hand, the lightest tensing of a calf muscle will effect the quality of the performance. Focus must be absolute. Everything else becomes insignificant.

Riding was my refuge as a teenager, when I felt I had little control over any other aspect of my life. It was my stress release when I had a career. It had become my salvation when I had nothing else. On the back of a horse I felt whole, complete, connected to that vital place in the very center of me that had otherwise closed itself off, and the chaos within me found balance.

D’Artagnon and I moved across the sand arena through the last wisps of the morning ground fog, the horse’s muscles bulging and rolling, his hooves striking the ground in perfect metronome rhythm. I massaged the left rein, sat heavily into his back, tightened my calves around him. The energy moved from his hindquarters, over his back; his neck rounded and his knees came up into the stylized, slow-motion trot called
passage
. He seemed almost to float beneath me, to bounce like a huge, soft ball. I felt he might take wing if only I knew the one secret word to whisper to him.

We halted in the center of the ring at the place known as X. In that moment I felt joy and peace.

I dropped the reins on his neck and patted him. He lowered his head and started to walk forward, then stopped and came to attention.

A girl sat on the white board fence that ran along the road. She watched me with a sense of expectation about her. Even though I hadn’t noticed her, she’d been there, waiting. I judged her to be about twelve. Her hair was long and brown, perfectly straight and neatly held back from her face with a barrette on each side. She wore little round black-rimmed glasses that made her look very serious. I rode toward her with a vague feeling of apprehension that made no sense at the time.

“Can I help you?” I asked. D’Ar blew through his nostrils at her, ready to bolt and save us from the intruder. I should have let him.

“I’m here to see Ms. Estes,” she said properly, as if she’d come on business.

“Elena Estes?”

“Yes.”

“And you are …?”

“Molly Seabright.”

“Well, Molly Seabright, Ms. Estes isn’t here at the moment.”

“You’re
Ms. Estes,” she declared. “I recognize your horse. His name is D’Artagnon, like in
The Three Musketeers
.” She narrowed her eyes. “You cut your hair.” Disapproval.

“Do I know you?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know me?” I asked, the apprehension rising up like bile through my chest to the base of my throat. Maybe she was a relative of
Hector Ramirez come
to tell me she hated me. Maybe she’d been sent as a decoy by an older relative who would now pop out of nowhere to shoot me or scream at me or throw acid in my face.

“From
Sidelines,”
she said.

I felt like I’d walked into the middle of a play. Molly Seabright took pity on me and carefully climbed down from the fence. She was slightly built and dressed neatly in sensible dark slacks and a little blue T-shirt with a small daisy chain embroidered around the throat. She came up along D’Artagnon’s shoulder and carefully held the magazine out to me, folded open to an interior page.

The photograph was in color. Me on D’Ar, riding through thin ribbons of early-morning fog. The sunlight made his coat shine as bright as a new penny. My hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail.

I had no memory of being photographed. I had certainly never been interviewed, though the writer seemed to know things about me I didn’t know myself. The caption read:
Private investigator Elena Estes enjoys an early-morning ride on D’Artagnon at Sean Avadon’s Avadonis Farm in Palm Beach Point Estates
.

“I’ve come to hire you,” Molly Seabright said.

I turned toward the barn and called for Irina, the stunning Russian girl who had beat me out for the groom’s job. She came out,
frowning
and sulky. I stepped down off D’Artagnon and asked her to please take him back to the barn. She took his reins, sighed and pouted and slouched away like a sullen runway model.

I ran a gloved hand back through my hair, startled to come to the end of it so quickly. A fist of tension began to quiver in my stomach.

“My sister is missing,” Molly Seabright said. “I’ve come to hire you to find her.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not a private investigator. This is some kind of mistake.”

“Why does the magazine say that you are?” she asked, looking stern and disapproving again. She didn’t trust me. I’d already lied to her once.

“I don’t know.”

“I have money,” she said defensively. “Just because I’m twelve doesn’t mean I can’t hire you.”

“You can’t hire me because I’m not a private investigator.

“Then what are you?” she demanded.

A broken-down, busted-out, pathetic ex-sheriffs detective. I’d thumbed my nose at the life I’d been raised in, been ostracized from the life I’d chosen. What did that make me?

“Nothing,” I said, handing the magazine back to her. She didn’t take it.

I walked away to an ornate park bench that sat along the end of the arena and took a long drink from the bottle of water I’d left there.

“I have a hundred dollars with me,” the girl said. “For a deposit. I expect you have a daily fee and that you probably charge expenses. I’m sure we can work something out.”

Sean emerged from the end of the stable, squinting into the distance, showing his profile. He stood with one booted leg cocked and pulled a pair of deerskin gloves from the waist of his brown breeches. A perfect ad for Ralph Lauren.

I headed across the arena, anger boiling now in my stomach. Anger, and underlying it a building sense of panic.

“What the fuck is this?” I shouted, smacking him in the chest with the magazine.

He took a step back, looking offended. “It might be
Sidelines
, but I can’t read with my nipples, so I
can’t say for certain
. Jesus Christ, El. What did you do to your hair?”

I hit him again, harder, wanting to hurt him. He grabbed the magazine away from me, took another quick step out of range, and turned to the cover. “Betsy Steiner’s stallion. Have you seen him? He’s to die for.”

“You told a reporter I’m a private investigator.”

“They asked me who you were. I had to tell them something.”

“No, you didn’t have to. You didn’t have to tell them anything.”

“It’s only
Sidelines
. For Christ’s sake.”

“It’s my name in a goddamn magazine read by thousands of people. Thousands of people now know where to find me. Why don’t you just paint a big target on my chest?”

He frowned. “Only dressage people read the dressage section. And then only to see if their own names are in the show results.”

“Thousands of people now think I’m a private investigator.”

“What was I supposed to tell them? The truth?” Said as if that was the most distasteful option. Then I realized it probably was.

“How about ‘no comment’?”

“That’s not very interesting.”

I pointed at Molly Seabright. “That little girl has come here to hire me. She thinks I can help her find her sister.”

“Maybe you can.”

I refused to state the obvious.

Sean lifted a shoulder with lazy indifference and handed the magazine back to me. “What else have you got to do with your time?”

Irina emerged from the barn, leading Oliver. Sean dismissed me and went to his teak mounting block.

Molly Seabright was sitting on the park bench with her hands folded in her lap. I turned and walked to the barn, hoping she would just go away. D’Artagnon’s bridle hung from the ceiling on a four-pronged hook near an antique mahogany cabinet full of leather-cleaning supplies. I chose a small damp sponge from the work table, rubbed it over a bar of glycerine soap and began to clean the bridle, trying to narrow the focus of my mind on the small motor skills involved in the task.

“You’re very rude.”

I could see her from the corner of my eye: standing as tall as she could—five-feet-nothing—her mouth a tight little knot.

“Yes, I am. That’s part of the joy of being me: I don’t care.”

“You’re not going to help me.”

“I can’t. I’m not what you need. If your sister is missing, your parents should go to the cops.”

“I went to the sheriffs office. They wouldn’t help me either.”

“You
went? What about your parents? They don’t care your sister is missing?”

For the first time Molly Seabright seemed to hesitate. “It’s complicated.”

“What’s complicated about it? She’s either missing or she’s not.”

“Erin doesn’t live with us.”

“How old is she?”

“Eighteen. She doesn’t get along with our parents.”

“There’s something new.”

“It’s not like she’s bad or anything,” Molly said defensively. “She doesn’t do drugs or anything like that. It’s just that she has her own opinions, that’s all. And her opinions aren’t Bruce’s opinions—”

“Who’s Bruce?”

“Our stepfather. Mom always sides with him, no matter how asinine he is. It makes Erin angry, so she moved out.”

“So Erin is technically an adult, living on her own, free to do whatever she wants,” I said. “Does she have a boyfriend?”

Molly shook her head, but avoided my eyes. She wasn’t so sure of that answer, or she thought a lie might better serve her cause.

“What makes you think she’s missing?”

“She was supposed to pick me up Monday morning. That’s her day off. She’s a groom at the show grounds for Don Jade. He trains jumpers. I didn’t have school. We were going to go to the beach, but she never came or called me. I called her and left a message on her cell phone, and she never called me back.”

“She’s probably busy,” I said, stroking the sponge down a length of rein. “Grooms work hard.”

Even as I said it I could see Irina sitting on the mounting block, face turned to the sun as she blew a lazy stream of cigarette smoke at the sky. Most grooms.

“She would have called me,” Molly insisted. “I went to the show grounds myself the next day—yesterday. A man at Don Jade’s barn told me Erin doesn’t work there anymore.”

Grooms quit. Grooms get fired. Grooms decide one day to become florists and decide the next day they’d rather be brain surgeons. On the flip side, there are trainers with reputations as slave masters, temperamental prima donnas who
go
through grooms like disposable
razors
. I’ve known trainers who demanded a groom sleep every night in a stall with a psychotic stallion, valuing the horse far more than the person. I’ve known trainers who fired five grooms in a week. Erin Seabright was, by the sound of it, headstrong and argumentative, maybe with an eye on the guys. She was eighteen and tasting independence for the first time … And why I was even thinking this through was beyond me. Habit, maybe. Once a cop … But I hadn’t been a cop for nearly two years, and I would never be a cop again.

“Sounds to me like Erin has a life of her own. Maybe she doesn’t have time for a kid sister right now.”

Molly Seabright’s expression darkened. “I told you Erin’s not like that. She wouldn’t just leave.”

“She left home.”

“But she didn’t leave me. She wouldn’t.”

Finally she sounded like a child instead of a forty-nine-year-old CPA. An uncertain, frightened little girl. Looking to me for help.

“People change. People grow up,” I said bluntly, taking the bridle down from the hook. “Maybe it’s your turn.”

The words hit their mark like bullets. Tears rose behind the Harry Potter glasses. I
didn’t allow myself to feel guilt or
pity. I didn’t want a job or a client. I didn’t want people coming into my life with expectations.

“I thought you would be different,” she said.

“Why would you think that?”

She glanced over at the magazine laying on the shelf with the cleaning supplies, D’Artagnon and I floating across the page like something from a dream. But she said nothing. If she had an explanation for her belief, she thought better of sharing it with me.

“I’m nobody’s hero, Molly. I’m sorry you got that impression. I’m sure if your parents aren’t worried about your sister, and the cops aren’t worried about your sister, then there’s nothing to be worried about. You don’t need me, and believe me, you’d be sorry if you did.”

She didn’t look at me. She stood there for a moment, composing herself, then pulled a small red wallet from the carrying pouch strapped around her waist. She took out a ten-dollar-bill and placed it on the magazine.

“Thank you for your time,” she said politely, then turned and walked away.

I didn’t chase after her. I didn’t try to give her her ten dollars back. I watched her walk away and thought she was more of an adult than I was.