Magic and the Modern Girl (24 page)

Melissa smiled. “I noticed.”

“Rob Peterson!” This time, she only nodded. I couldn’t help but steal a glance at the calendar, at its smooth, unblemished page of blank squares, nary a red
X
in sight. “But he seems like a really nice guy!”

Melissa harrumphed a little. “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

“Well—” There wasn’t any graceful way to finish that sentence. Instead, I settled for a new direction. “No! It’s just that I was surprised to finally meet him. Surprised to find him here so early!”

“Or so late,” Melissa said, utterly unconcerned.

I knew that I was supposed to say something ribald, something encouraging, something utterly in keeping with our feminist-charged friendship. I knew that I was supposed to give her a high five, or some complicated handshake, or exclaim, “You go, girl!”

Instead, I passed my cup back for a refill of hot water.

She obliged, and then she said, “So? What’s up?”

“It’s probably nothing major…”

“Of course. You make it over here by six o’clock every morning, when there’s nothing major going on.”

I made a face. “Will and I went to a lecture last night, down at the Smithsonian.”

“Oh, no! Not a lecture!” Her mocking tone made it sound as if we had done something worse than tour every last nightclub in D.C.

“That’s not the problem,” I said, and my voice was serious enough that she stopped her joking. She leaned in, intent now on what I had to tell her. “Have you heard about the Artistic Avenger?”

“The what?”

At least I wasn’t the last person in town to know about the newest crackpot sensation. “The Artistic Avenger. Apparently, she’s been camping out on the Capitol steps. Campaigning for better funding for creative enterprise. Her slogan is Empower The Arts.”

“Your anima!”

I nodded grimly. “Ariel.”

Melissa sucked in her breath and said, “What happened?”

So I told her about all of it, ending with Will driving me home, about our awkward parting. “I don’t know what to do, Melissa. I really like this guy.”

“Then tell him.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

I sighed in exasperation. “What am I supposed to do? Put on my favorite apron, invite him over for a cup of coffee and say, ‘By the way, I forgot to mention that I’m a witch.’”

“Sounds about right. Personally, I wouldn’t bother with the apron, but to each her own. And you might want to take a couple of Belly Laughs, so that you have something to feed him when he starts to ask you questions.” She gestured toward the caramel nut clusters on the counter between us, rounded into high domes of salted sweetness.

“I’m not joking!”

Melissa shook her head. “Neither am I! Listen to yourself, Jane. You sound different when you talk about this guy. You’re relaxed around him. You’re comfortable talking to him. You aren’t twisting yourself into a pretzel to be his idea of the perfect girlfriend.
You already trust him.
Now you just have to share this one little thing with him.”

I started to protest out of habit, but then I cut off my own words.

Melissa was right. Things
were
different with Will. I didn’t sit at my desk, hoping against all breathless hope that he was going to set foot inside the Peabridge. I didn’t stare at my phone with laser vision, trying to make him call. I didn’t worry about every word that I said to him, didn’t weigh each and every syllable before I dared to set it into a conversation.

I was comfortable with him.

Even though I’d only known him for a few weeks, I was comfortable with him.

And if—
if
was a huge word, but it was one I was going to have to swallow at some point—
if
there was really something there, really the basis of a true relationship, then Will was going to have to find out about my powers. I wasn’t exactly going to settle down in the suburbs with an SUV, a Jack Russell terrier, two-point-four children, and a husband who knew nothing of my magic—
Bewitched
’s Samantha Stephens all neatly packaged for the twenty-first century.

Unless, of course, I abandoned my witchcraft forever.

That had seemed like such an attractive option, only a few days before. But now, I wasn’t so sure. I had seen Gran and Clara working with their familiars, but their thawing spell had not helped bolster my powers in the least. I had been so disappointed when I’d realized that they weren’t pouring astral energy back into me, weren’t returning it like the grudging Ariel. I didn’t have the faintest idea of what I actually wanted.

“You really think I have to tell him?” My voice dropped to a whisper.

Melissa answered by nodding as she passed me a fortifying Bunny Bite. I put the entire morsel of carrot cake in my mouth at once, letting the cream cheese frosting melt across my tongue while I contemplated taking the proverbial witchcraft bull by the horns. I chewed and swallowed and then thought of my next line of argument. “What if he totally freaks out? What if he never wants to see me again?”

“Better to know now, right? Now, rather than later, when you’re in this thing even deeper?”

I stared at her. “You still rip off your Band-Aids without even a moment’s hesitation, don’t you?”

She grinned and offered me another Bite. “But I always have something good waiting, to distract me from the pain.”

Before I could agree, before I could say that I would tell Will everything about my bizarre magical self, there were more footsteps on the back stairs. Rob poked his head in from the hallway. “Coast is clear? The distaff debate can pause long enough for a man to walk through?”

“Absolutely.” Melissa beamed.

As Rob seized a having-come-downstairs kiss, the front door of the bakery opened. I turned, grateful for the distraction, only to see Neko glide inside.

“I thought you’d be here,” he said to me.

“Why did you think that?”

“Hot date last night? I stopped by your house this morning? The bed was tossed like burglars had a field day, but you were nowhere in sight? No manly shoes shoved beneath your bed?”

I glared at Neko and then braved a look in Rob’s general direction. Melissa’s beau was staring at my familiar, a look of bemusement on his plump-cheeked face.

“Hell-o there,” Neko said, emphasizing the first syllable of his greeting and darting a glance at Rob’s arm around Melissa’s waist. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

If Melissa hadn’t been my best friend, I might have missed her gritting her teeth. No, that was a lie. All three of us heard the sound. And if ground molars weren’t enough warning, any innocent onlooker could have heard Melissa’s exasperated sigh, her frustration as haunting as a barely remembered tune. “Neko,” she said. “This is Rob Peterson.” She turned to Rob. “Neko is one of Jane’s closest friends.”

My familiar offered a hand, shaking Rob’s as if he were absorbing some secret message from the touch of flesh on flesh. I glanced nervously from his face to Melissa’s. My best friend stretched a smile over her teeth. I knew that she was thinking about the last time she had introduced one of her boyfriends to Neko. I was pretty sure that Jacques had not even looked over his shoulder as he followed my familiar out of Melissa’s shop, out of her heart, out of her love life forever.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Rob. He turned back to Melissa. “I’ve got to get down to the office. That deposition is still scheduled for this morning, and it may actually stretch into the afternoon. But you’re up for dinner?”

“Of course.” She grinned, and I suspected that a smile that broad was meant to be a comment on something a bit more than the cementing of evening plans. “Give me a call when you know what time you’ll be free.”

Rob kissed her and then hurried to the door. He turned back on the threshold. “It was really nice to meet both of you. We’ll have dinner soon, Jane?”

“Absolutely,” I said, and he sauntered away.

Neko barely waited until the door had closed behind Rob before he whirled back toward Melissa. “Don’t I get a cup of hot chocolate? Hold the chocolate and double the milk?”

Melissa was shaking her head, a rueful smile quirking her lips. “Just a sec.”

“What?” Neko said to me as I stepped up to the counter. “Why are you both looking at me that way?”

“No way,” I said. “It’s just that we’re both pleased you didn’t decide to steal Rob away from Melissa.”

“Steal Rob—” He took a step back in indignant protest, fluttering his right hand above his heart as if we were slaying him with our criticism.

“You have to admit,” Melissa said, “there’s precedent.” Precedent. She
had
been spending a lot of time listening to legal mumbo jumbo.

“Girlfriend, I might be an absolutely irresistible man, but there are some limits to my powers of persuasion! Did you think I’d make him gay just by shaking his hand?”

“Of course not!” Melissa protested.

Neko eyed her archly. “I’ve told you before, and I’ll remind you as often as you need to hear it. Jacques leaned my way before he ever asked you out on a date. It’s not you, it’s me, girlfriend.”

Melissa clanked his mug of heated milk onto the counter. “Let’s just forget about Jacques, okay? I mean, about Jacques and me. Truce?”

“Truce.” Neko buried his face in the cup, emerging almost a minute later with a white mustache thick enough to get him headlined in the Got Milk? campaign. He turned to me. “But I’m here for a real reason, Jane. You have got to get your grandmother under control.”

I immediately pictured Nuri, wondered what sort of problems my grandmother was having with her familiar. Magic had always come hard to Gran; even more than Clara, my grandmother had been ostracized by the Coven because her powers were weak. Maybe I had pushed her too hard. Maybe she shouldn’t have awakened her own familiar. Maybe she was so miserably unhappy that she’d never work a magic spell again.

“What’s wrong, Neko?”

“Small countries have mobilized armies with less planning than your grandmother is investing in this wedding.”

I snorted, letting relief blow away my astral worries. If we were only talking about wedding details, then everything would be fine.

“What do you mean?” Melissa asked, turning to me with a look that was almost accusing. “I can’t believe that
your
grandmother is the type to be worried about the trappings of a wedding!”

Neko sighed dramatically. “To the rest of the world, she’s a sweet, quiet old woman. But to those of us helping get ready for the big day…”

I glared at him. “You volunteered!”

“I thought I’d be able to offer an opinion or two and then be done! I didn’t realize that staging a wedding for a couple in their eighties was going to take more effort than putting a man on the moon!”

“What’s the problem now?” I asked.

“The string quartet has been tossed out. She’s looking for a full band. Nine people. Plus a DJ for the band’s breaks. George loves saxophone, so we need two.”

“She just wants people to have fun,” I said weakly.

“And she’s obsessing about party favors.”

“Come on, Neko. Most brides give their guests some type of gift.”

“Your grandmother wants to hand out a CD.”

“So? They shouldn’t be too expensive to burn. What’s she thinking of? Their first dance?”

“Opera.” He shuddered. “She wants to include opera, Jane. A different aria for each guest. A personalized CD for every single person who attends. The guest list is up to two hundred!”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“My point exactly.” He set his mug on the counter with a finality that said we had reached a deal. “You’ll tell her that she’s going too far.”

“I don’t know….” I tried to picture me lecturing Gran about wedding etiquette. I couldn’t really imagine how the conversation would go. She was the one who had spent a lifetime telling
me
what was right and wrong. I wasn’t sure that either of us would survive having the tables turned. “Maybe I can get Clara on board. We can tell her together.”

“I don’t care how you do it. Just make her see reason.”

“You sound desperate.”

He looked at me slyly. “I’m not the one who’s desperate. But you will be, once you see the dress she’s planning for you.”

My throat dried in sudden panic. “What?”

“You’ll see,” he sang.

“Neko, I already know about the color.”

“What about the color?” Melissa asked.

“Orange,” Neko said with a distinctly evil pleasure. “And silver.”

Horror spread on Melissa’s face. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Neko shook his head. “Orange, because it’s George’s favorite color. And silver, because they’ve dated for twenty-five years.” Well, at least there was some reasoning behind it. My grandmother had not
completely
taken leave of her senses. Neko sighed in exasperation. “You cannot believe how many times I’ve told the matchbook people that the colors aren’t a mistake.”

“Matchbooks?” I said. “No one gives out matchbooks at a wedding anymore.”

“Someone does,” Neko said, his mouth twitching into a cruel smile. “Along with embossed cocktail napkins, Jordan almonds and four hundred votive candles.”

“She’s eighty-five years old!” I said.

“But she’s determined to have the wedding she never had as a girl.” Neko sparked the words with a dramatic twist of his neck, a hand cast to his forehead.

I shook my head. “My own grandmother. Bridezilla. Who would have believed it?”

“I haven’t even started to tell you about her plans for tossing the bouquet.” He looked toward the front door wickedly, and I watched Melissa blush.

“Enough,” I said. “Torture us by telling us about my dress. Just how horrible is it?”

“I wouldn’t dream of ruining the surprise. You’ll see a swatch when we get together after work today.”

“We?” This was the first I’d heard of plans involving any group.

“Nuri and Majom are getting restless.”

Melissa looked up from the tray of Blond Brunettes that she was slicing. “Who are Nuri and Majom?”

Oh. Between Rob and Will and animas and life in general, I hadn’t even had a chance to tell Melissa about my own little attempt at managing a coven. “Familiars. For Gran and Clara. We awakened them the other night. They’re going to help with the…situation in the basement.”