Magic and the Modern Girl (20 page)

Instead of answering, he said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I don’t think I have a choice.”

Before I could elaborate, Neko strolled into the living room, as confident as if he still lived there. He looked sleek as ever and a little dangerous, and he held himself with a certain aloofness. “I didn’t realize we were supposed to bring gifts,” he said, a single eyebrow arched in inquiry at the boxes in David’s hands. I wondered if he could sense the contents, even from across the room.

“I was hoping that you could help me, Neko.” I’d spent part of the afternoon plotting out my peace offering. “Gran and Clara will be here in just a minute, and I want Gran to know I’ve been thinking about her wedding. I’ve chosen my jewelry, to wear with the maid of honor dress. What do you think of these?” I turned to the coffee table, where I’d laid out a pair of silver earrings. Their sharp spikes stood out like spines on a sea urchin, and they radiated a certain early-1980s’ malevolence.

Neko looked as horrified as I’d expected. “What? Are you hoping to get a satellite signal in the church?”

“I just thought—”

“You just thought that you’d ruin your grandmother’s one perfect day of happiness.” He clicked his tongue with the disdain of a Hollywood costume designer. David actually laughed out loud at my familiar’s tone of horror. “Melt those things down. Pearls,” he said, as if he were teaching me a new word. “Peeearls. Drop earrings. Classic.”

“Drop earrings,” I repeated. And then I couldn’t keep from saying, “Are you sure they’ll go with orange and silver?”

Neko shuddered. “Your grandmother is one strong-willed woman.”

“Tell me something I
don’t
know,” I said, thinking of years of teenage conflict.

“You know, it’s not just the colors. She is insisting on opera music for the service. For the processional
and
the recessional.”

“That’s not too bad. Is it?”

“The Queen of the Night aria? For a wedding?”

I smiled. “I think she’s just trying to include Uncle George. Opera has always been his thing, you know. She wants to show off a little for the guests, let everyone know how much they have in common.”

He rolled his eyes. “I know.” I smiled, pleased that we had gotten past our little tiff so easily. Neko, though, was not quite ready to let bygones be bygones. “While we’re talking about showing off in front of assembled friends and family, you have
got
to do something about your highlights. I’ve seen genie lanterns with less tacky brass than you’re showing these days.”

Now
that
stung. Especially when I saw David fake tremendous interest in the packages that he had set down beside the couch. “You were the one who told me to color my hair in the first place!”

“But you haven’t been back to Jacques for the touchups, have you?”

Busted. “No.”

“Jane, Jane, Jane, when
are
you going to learn?” He sighed, as if we were discussing starving children in some distant corner of the world. Fine. At least he’d spewed his nastiness, and now we could move on. I’d suffered enough cosmetic and sartorial humiliation.

But, no. Neko was only warming to his job. “What
have
you been doing without me? You couldn’t possibly think
that
green eyeliner would help the hazel mud you’re stuck with, could you?” Before I could protest, he moved in for the kill. “And you might
think
that you’ll get more dates if you dress like a boy, but I’m here to tell you, that is never, ever going to happen, girlfriend.”

I glanced at my oxford cloth shirt, suddenly aware that it did nothing to bolster my less than robust figure. A distant part of my scattered mind wondered what my green eyeliner looked like now, against a face that must be flushed the tint of merlot.

I was beginning to regret that I’d added crab shumai into the bargain to lure Neko here. Surely, my complete humiliation should have been sufficient currency to bring my familiar back into the fold.

At least I was managing to entertain my warder. I was certain I heard David smother a laugh before he said, “Can I get the two of you something to drink? Before you move on to round two?”

“There won’t be any more rounds,” I muttered darkly. “And I’ll get the drinks. What’ll you have?” I turned to Neko, pasting a sweet smile on my lips.

“Do you still have the Fish Eye Chard?” Neko purred.

“No,” I said, determined to keep my voice sunny. “You went through all six bottles before you left. Besides, we’re going to be working tonight.”

His lips moved into a taut
O.
“Soda water for me, then. With a splash of lime. And a mint leaf or two, if you’ve got it.”

Great. We were reduced to virgin mojitos. Watery, virgin mojitos.

I escaped to the kitchen and started to play bartender. Just as I was trying to knock the last ice cubes out of their stubborn plastic tray, there was a knock at the door. David did the honors, and I heard Gran’s surprised exclamation as she registered his presence. “It’s always so good to see you, dear,” she said, and I could picture her patting his arm, even though I could not glimpse the interaction from the kitchen.

“We ran into the deliveryman as we walked through the gate, Jeanette. Er, Jane.” Clara sailed in from the living room, trying to finesse the fact that she still had trouble remembering my preferred name. “We tried to pay, but he insisted that everything was taken care of.”

“The magic of credit cards,” I said, taking a large brown paper sack from her and trying not to put too much emphasis on the second word. The smell of soy sauce and hot oil—or maybe a twinge of apprehension—twisted my belly.

I’d improvised, ordering for Gran, Clara and David. The good thing about building a menu for five, though, was that you could justify enough dishes that everyone was ultimately satisfied. In addition to Neko’s Hunan shrimp-with-shrimp, I set out white cardboard containers of mu shu chicken, beef with broccoli, Szechuan green beans and pork fried rice, with a glorious plastic bowl of crispy sesame chicken anchoring the feast.

Locusts had nothing on us. We moved through the food like an army on the march, juggling chopsticks and serving spoons like high-grade weapons. Gran went back for thirds, and Clara devoted herself to picking out every last piece of beef from the surrounding bright green broccoli. Keeping in mind the magical feats to come, I limited myself to a couple of bites from each dish (Neko’s shrimp excluded—I got none of those, given how tremendously possessive my familiar could be).

I caught David looking at me with something akin to approval.

When we’d decimated the main dishes, I passed around dessert. Clara declared the almond cookies the finest she’d ever tasted, and Neko pounced on his fortune cookie. “Here!” he called, as if we’d all only just arrived. “Take a fortune cookie! Come on! Everyone! Open them up! Hurry! Now we’ll go around in a circle and read our fortunes out loud!”

He demonstrated, shattering his vanilla cookie into shards in his excitement to get to the slip of paper inside. “You will go on many journeys and have many adventures. In bed.”

“What?” Gran asked.

“In bed!” Neko bounced up and down on the couch. “That’s the way you read fortunes. You put ‘in bed’ after the words. It’s much more fun! Everything’s more fun in bed! Right, Jane? Read yours next.”

I kept my head down, refusing to take the slightest chance that I would meet David’s gaze.

I couldn’t kill Neko. Executing my familiar would negate my entire magical plan. Murdering him would make the rest of my arcane redemption impossible; I would never locate Ariel. Throwing daggers at him, attacking him with boiling oil, skinning him from head to toe—each option would leave me worse off than I was now.

Now. When I was struggling to swallow, fighting to smile, trying to remember that he
wanted
me to flush with embarrassment.

Instead, I took a deep breath and sat up straight on the edge of the overstuffed green couch. “I’ll read my fortune later. After we’re done.”

“Done, dear?” Gran was immediately attentive. “What are we doing?”

Studiously avoiding looking at David, I said, “I have a favor to ask you. Both of you—Gran, Clara.” They looked curious. “It’s about witchcraft.”

Gran pursed her lips. When we’d had our run-in with the Coven the year before, she’d alternated between worrying about me and my desire to fit in, and worrying about herself and her disdain for a group of women who could be so divisive as to mock her witchy shortcomings.

Clara, on the other hand, looked pensive. She was far more disposed to matters arcane; she’d spent years meditating in Sedona, absorbing the powers of crystals and the vibrations of the Vortex. She had less use for the Coven than Gran had; Clara considered her basic female essence to be a greater foundation for witchcraft than any group of women who gathered together for a touch of socializing and ostracization. She responded first to my statement. “What about witchcraft? What do you want us to do, Jeanette?” She must have seen me flinch, but she didn’t bother to rephrase her question with my real name.

I took a deep breath. “I haven’t really told you what’s been going on here. I—” I stopped as sudden tears thickened the back of my throat. I hadn’t realized that I was still so emotional about the topic. I hadn’t realized that I was afraid to talk to Gran and Clara. I swallowed hard and rushed ahead. “I need your help.”

Gran leaned over and patted my hand. “Of course, dear. Whatever we can do to help you.” She fumbled for her handbag. “Is it money? Because if it’s money, I can help you, but I really have to question your planning, inviting us over and spending so much on dinner, only to ask for a loan.”

“No, Gran,” I said, and I actually managed to smile. “It isn’t money.”

“It’s some type of spell, isn’t it?” Damn. Clara could be perceptive. There was no reason for me to deny it, no reason to beat around any more bushes. Of course, it helped her to guess, having David and Neko standing close.

I glanced at them before I said, “Yes.” And then, because I’d run out of every last delay, I said, “I’ve lost my powers. They faded because I didn’t use them. I was distracted in the past year, with work and with—I don’t know—life.”

“Didn’t use them!” Clara shook her head in surprise. I knew that she spent her power in dribs and drabs, casting runes every morning, stretching her magical senses to measure the aura of every person around her.

Gran pursed her lips. “Well, dear, if you lost yours through nonuse, then I can’t imagine the state of
my
magic.” She dusted her hands, as if she were trying to shed some dry residue. “I haven’t used mine since those terrible Coven women ran us round in circles.”

I stared at her, my entire plan disintegrating in my mind. “I—” I started, but I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “But—”

I threw a panicked glance at David, only to find him smiling gently. “Sarah, it all has to do with baseline powers. With raw ability. You know that your powers have always been…subtle.”

Gran pursed her lips. “I’m the weakest of the three of us, when it comes to these magic things.”

David permitted himself a nod. “And weaker witches don’t experience the same type of drain. Oh, your power will eventually trickle away if you never use it, but the loss will be relatively slow. Even after a year of nonuse, you likely haven’t lost very much at all. Not like Jane, here.”

Great. Yet another so-called advantage of my amazing ability to work spells. I turned into a washed-up old husk faster than anyone else.

“So I can still help Jane?” Gran asked, and her earnest desire to assist brought fresh tears to my eyes.

David nodded. “You can still help.”

Clara leaned forward. “But what exactly are we here to do? What have you tried already?”

I shrugged. “David and Neko tried to help me, when I first realized what was going on. We thought we’d found the solution. I worked a spell to make an anima—”

“A what?” Clara turned her head to one side, curiosity on her face.

“An anima. A sort of magical robot. But she doesn’t look like a robot. She looks like a woman. She—Oh, it doesn’t matter. She didn’t work out. She was supposed to build up my powers by getting some magical work done around here. Polishing my crystals, cleaning my books. That was supposed to bring back my own magical strength, reflect it back to me since I made her. But something went wrong, things didn’t fall into place the way they should have. I got the tiniest bit of power when she spoke to me, but the rest of mine was drained away. Completely.”

Gran looked at me shrewdly. “It sounds to me like you were trying to play a bit of Tom Sawyer. Get someone else to do what you should have been doing on your own.”

I shrugged. “David and I thought it would work.”

“Shortcuts usually don’t, dear,” Gran said simply.

I bit back a few words of frustration and settled for nodding my head in agreement. “You’re right. And so, I’ve got another plan.” I saw Gran’s eyes dart toward David. “David’s agreed, Gran. He thinks this one is a good idea.”

“And what is it?” asked Clara when I steeled myself for the great reveal.

“I want you each to awaken your own familiar. I want to teach you about witchcraft, teach you like the Coven never took the time to do.”

Silence.

David watched my relatives, his face impassive. Neko stared at me as if I’d suddenly sprouted fangs, wings and a trunk. Gran looked confused, and Clara seemed slightly put out. Not surprisingly, Gran recovered first. Practical, logical Gran. “I don’t understand,” she said. “How can teaching
us
help you regain
your
powers?”

“Magic isn’t like science,” I explained. “With science, when you use something up—like a battery—it wears out. Magic is exactly the opposite. Using it makes it
stronger
. My awakening Ariel should have increased the power I had at my disposal, would have, if I hadn’t made a mistake. If you make familiars, and if I teach you everything
I
know, then there should be some sort of multiplication effect. I should get back to where I was. And then some, with any luck. It would be like having a coven of our very own.”