Waiting for Magic (19 page)

She was pretty clear about Devin pushing her up toward Kemble’s waiting arms. And she hadn’t hallucinated sitting on the bank, trying to get her breath, because Devin’s eyes had definitely been brown then. The trudge into downtown L.A. had been only too real. The electric feel of collapsing on Devin’s chest had been dimmed by her exhaustion. Clear. Yet it all seemed distant.

Drew took one look at Kee’s expression and gathered her into a hug. “It’s okay, honey. You’re okay now. Time to sleep.”

Kee struggled to swallow. Drew patted her shoulder and grabbed her sleep shirt. As Drew pulled it over Kee’s head she looked up into Drew’s face, so like their mother’s, coal-black hair, clear gray eyes. You looked at Drew and you could believe she was magic. Drew was examining Kee carefully, but her face was pinched with stress.

“Sorry you had to go through that,” Kee murmured.

Drew shrugged. “Waiting was the worst.” She sighed and pulled back the comforter splashed with red and blue that looked like a Mondrian painting. “How did a history major get the power to be a Seer?” she muttered.

“The past is a window to the future?” Kee heaved herself up on the bed.

“Doesn’t seem to do me much good. Or anybody else,” Drew groused.

“I’d give anything to have magic, no matter how stupid it is.”

Drew pulled the coverlet over her. “I know, honey. And what you really want is the love that unleashes the magic. That’s worth any price.” Drew smiled and Kee knew she was thinking of Michael.

“Yeah.” Kee kept her face as still and closed as she could. She dared not let her sister suspect that while she hadn’t found her one true love, she’d somehow become obsessed with her brother in a really awful way. God, she was a bad person.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Drew asked, taking her hand.

Guess her face was more transparent than she thought. “The Parents are angry.” It was just the first thing that came to mind. She stuffed her pain about her feelings for Devin down and mustered a smile. “At least after tonight, no one can call me Daddy’s girl. I’ve left being a good girl behind.”

“Stupid sister.” Drew bent and kissed her forehead. “Of course you’re still the good girl. You didn’t really want to go tonight, did you? You did it to help Kemble, to help the family.”

Kee sucked in a breath. She’d never thought of it like that.

“And you’ll always be Daddy’s girl. He’s got a soft spot for you.”

“I don’t understand why.”

“I think it’s because you’re the opposite of him in a lot of ways,” Drew said. “He’s controlled, intellectual. You’re vibrant and emotional, impulsive, artistic.”

Drew acted like those characteristics were good. “Tris is different than
Father. That doesn’t mean they always got along.”

“Tris is a son. That’s a whole other thing.”

Kee frowned.

“Don’t look like that,” Drew said, pushing her wet hair back from her cheek. “I’ve always admired your spontaneity, little sister. I think you suppress it too much sometimes.”

Drew
admired her? Impossible. And if she knew what Kee had been thinking about Devin, whatever she felt would turn to disgust in one second flat.

“Now get some sleep.” Drew rose and turned out the light. “Father will have forgiven everyone by tomorrow morning. Except Kemble, of course.”

Kee heard the door close. But the dark room wasn’t comforting. Because that meant she was left alone with her thoughts and she didn’t seem to be able to keep them away from Devin.

*****

Devin toweled off his hair and rubbed his body down. He could hear Drew and Kee’s voices murmuring from upstairs, though not the words. That was strange.

But that meant Michael was still here, since he’d never leave without Drew. Just the guy Devin had to see. It had been a long day. He should be dead tired. But he was wired with a kind of electric energy that wouldn’t let him rest. Not until he knew.

He threw on a terry robe and tied it around his hips. He trotted down the hall of the Bay of Pigs. Michael was still in the kitchen, alone now, seated at the breakfast bar. He had about two fingers of something the color of aged honey in his glass. The cut-crystal decanter half full of same, usually at home on the huge carved sideboard that served as a bar in the living room, sat at his elbow. Only the backsplash over the counters was lighted.

“Scotch?” Devin asked.

“Springbank 18, I think.” Michael said, in that deep voice that went with his six-five frame and his massive chest. “Grab a glass. You must need it.”

Devin pulled out a squat glass from one of the cabinets. He walked back to Michael, trying to think how to approach his questions, and held out his glass. Michael poured a generous two glugs from the decanter.

“Sorry about upsetting Drew.” He could start there.

Michael shrugged. “I thought she was getting a hold on the vision thing. But it still upsets her to no end to see the future. She isn’t sure when things are happening, or if she can change them, or if she should try.”

“She doesn’t have visions all the time anymore,” Devin offered.

“Thank God for small favors.” Michael held up his glass in a toast to the deity.

Michael said his alcoholism pretty much disappeared after he finally admitted he loved Drew, and realized it was time to move on from mourning his dead wife. Now he could have a drink and leave it at one or two. Drew had gotten more grounded, more involved in life too. They were good for each other. Michael was now part of the family. The Tremaines just seemed to take in strays. Maggie, Tris’s wife, was the same. Came from an awful home. But she just loved being part of the big, boisterous, loving, impossible Tremaine family. She’d contributed the first grandchild. Who knew what Jesse would be able to do when grew up and found his fated mate?

Devin had never felt he’d be part of that.

He still wouldn’t.

Michael’s first wife, Alice,
had raised his power. When she died, how did he get over his one true love and go on living? That was what he wanted to ask Michael most of all. Not likely.

“What did Drew see?” That was easiest to ask, and something he sure needed to know.

“She wouldn’t tell me. She just said you three were in terrible danger and she didn’t know when it would happen. She was pretty hysterical. So she had me Find you.”

“And we weren’t here. Must have been bad.”

“It was. I Found you when you were coming home, so we didn’t call out the troops. We came up here to the house. The wait was a tad harrowing.”

“She … didn’t say anything else?”

“Like what?”

Devin had prepared for this. “Like, anything else in our future.”

“Well, there was the burning castle that was about to be engulfed in a flood the other day. She felt that one might be personal. But you knew about that.”

He hadn’t. And it might not have made sense to him anyway until he’d seen Pendragon’s house tonight. Pretty much looked like a castle. Flooded…. Lots of that going around these days. What did it mean? But at least Drew hadn’t seen how they’d escaped the river tonight. Or she hadn’t told Michael. Maybe he only had to worry about Kemble knowing about his power.

On to a question perhaps even more important. “When you Found the Sword … did you feel when it was near you?”

“What do you mean?” Michael took a sip of the whisky.

“I don’t know … like it was kind of this overpowering presence, so overwhelming it made you feel lightheaded or nauseous or something?”

Michael frowned, his mother’s dark, Italian brows drawing together over his prominent nose. Michael was short for Michelangelo. “No. Not really.” He thought. “But any sensation was all mixed up with the Finding sense for me. I could feel where the Sword was. It drew me. I almost couldn’t help myself. So, yeah, it was a little overwhelming. But that’s what Finding is like. It was the same when I tried to Find Drew
at first. And then after we’d, uh, come together.…” Here he glanced over at Devin.

“I’m twenty-three, as everyone seems to forget.” Devin grimaced. “So after you’d had sex with Drew.…”

“Yeah.” Michael shrugged. “Or maybe it was after I accepted that I loved her. But either way, after that, even when she was far away I didn’t have to Find her. I just thought of her and I could feel where she was. Pretty overwhelming.”

“So, did Drew feel the Sword in Chicago?”

Michael considered. “I think she said something about that. Ask her.” Michael examined Devin’s face, frowning. “And you would be wanting to know this, why?”

Devin wanted to confide in Michael. He liked the man, even apart from how good he was with Drew. Michael was a great guy to have around if there was trouble. But Devin couldn’t tell him. Not yet. “Just want to know what to expect if we really do find a Talisman.”

Michael shook his head. “I think you only feel the Talismans if your power has been activated. So we’d better be sure someone with power is along for the search.”

That was just the bitch, wasn’t it? They
’d had two people along tonight who had power, though Michael didn’t know it. The stab of pain he felt in his gut had nothing to do with the bite of the Scotch.

“But you know,” Michael continued
, “the more we look for the Talismans, the more we’re going to find the Clan. Not a healthy situation.”

Devin’s brain was whirling.

“Here comes Drew.” Of course Michael would know where she was. Michael finished off his drink. “You’d better get some sleep. It’s nearly five in the morning.”

“Yeah,” Devin agreed. Like he could sleep. Michael stoppered the decanter, put it back out on the sideboard, and went to meet Drew on the staircase. He could hear their murmured endearments change as they turned heated. Then there was only one set of steps going up the stairs. Michael must have swept Drew up in his arms. Their togetherness was like barbed wire around Devin’s neck. He knocked over one of the stools at the breakfast bar as he surged to his feet, wondering how to stop himself from spiraling out of control. The pain was almost physical.

Then he just lost it. He punched a fist into the side of the arch over the bar and felt the plaster crack. He hit it again and again before he just collapsed against it, forehead on his forearm. He squeezed his eyes shut to stop the swirling thoughts.

Kee had felt a Talisman tonight at Pendragon’s castle while they were in the collection/dungeon room. He knew, because he’d felt it too. At least there was a good chance that the overwhelmed feeling, coupled with faintness and nausea, had been a reaction to the proximity of a Talisman. And they could feel it because they both had found their power.

Looked like Kee had been concealing a couple of important facts about her relationship with Museum Guy. She must have dated him more than twice. Hell, she was always up at the museum. Was she really just working on the exhibits or were they sneaking off to have sex? He felt sick with jealousy that someone else was touching her collarbones and her breasts, feeling the fine, smooth skin of her cheek, the silk of her hair. He pushed away from the arch, shaking, and righted the barstool. The fact that Pendragon probably did, in fact, have a Tarot Talisman should have thrilled him. The family needed that.

But Kee was lost to him forever. Not that he’d ever imagined they’d be together. She’d never think of him like that.
Little orphan boy who wasn’t quite a Tremaine. Brother. That was who he was to her. But to see her every day with someone who loved her as much as Michael loved Drew, or Maggie loved Tris, or the Parents loved each other, knowing she could never be his, might just kill him.

CHAPTER NINE

Kee couldn’t sleep, no matter how exhausted her body was. She was doing a really bad job of suppressing her feelings for Devin. Maybe she was raw from having a near-death experience, but images of Devin kept flipping through her brain. How had she gotten this bad?

An artist was allowed to notice everything about a person’s body. But it was supposed to be objective, an assessment of the light and shadow, the range of color needed to translate the three-dimensional being onto the two dimensions of the canvas and tell something about them, the light, and the moment in time. But her view of Devin wasn’t objective anymore. She’d painted his nipples brown and flat before. But now she had the urge to touch them. Of course she knew he had a full lower lip and a sharply cut upper one, but now they formed a mouth that could be kissed. His muscles moved in ways she’d seen a thousand times but never
seen
, and all she could think about was how it would be for him to hold her.