01 Do You Believe in Magic - The Children of Merlin

Do You Believe
In Magic?

By Susan Squires

Copyright 2012 Susan Squires

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, Liscense Notes

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CHAPTER ONE

Jason saw his reflection
wavering in the pool of blood under the streetlight. Pale eyes,
buzz cut, burly. He looked like what he was: a hard man. He glanced
to the body lying across the curb, its throat carved into a grim
smile. The executive type, soft. The knife snicked shut in Jason’s
hand, its blade flashing for an instant in the light. Not even a
challenge.

Beyond the stark channel of the
security light, shadows moved. Jason closed his eyes and drew the
power from deep in his belly. The world went red and he knew they
couldn’t see him anymore. He was safe. No one would believe these
homeless guys if they said they’d seen the murderer disappear into
thin air. They probably wouldn’t even bother telling their story to
the Vegas police when the body was finally found.

Jason walked toward the distant
kaleidoscope of neon creating a glow on the night sky. He wouldn’t
need to cloak his presence there. The crowds would do it for
him.

Half an hour later, he made his
way through the casino toward his hotel room. At three a.m. it
looked tawdry, like a whore whose mascara was running. When he’d
left the jangle of false excitement and ringing bells behind, he
whipped out his cell phone. He liked reporting by phone. He’d
caught a glimpse of the old woman once. He’d rather not chance that
again.

“
Hardwick, give her the
phone,” he barked and sat on the bed in the darkened room. The
windows looked out on the Strip. If sirens were racing to the
abandoned factory, no one would hear them from up here. Damn, he
was good. Nobody better. Except the old woman. But old as she was,
she couldn’t live much longer. Someday soon he’d be leading the
Clan.

“
You were right,” he said
when he heard her rasping breath on the line. “He’s in LA. He and
wife got six kids. Goes by the name of Tremaine these
days.”

He could feel her anger, though
her voice was even. “Any sign of power in their get?”

“
The guy I , uh, questioned
was real close to the family. He didn’t see any.”

A faint sigh of relief wheezed
from the phone. “Trevellyan doesn’t know that the Talismans are the
way to true power either, or he’d be searching for them just as we
are.” The old woman wanted the one thing she couldn’t have. Jason
hoped she never found it. “So their spawn are vulnerable,” the
voice like wind through dry leaves continued. “Where are they?”

“
I’m not a Finder.”

“
Find them, or you know what
will happen.” The voice was flat now.

Jason’s mind skittered over the last
time she’d been angry at him. When he hadn’t wanted to give up
Selah. He couldn’t go through that again. “You got it.” He kept his
voice as flat as hers and pushed the cascading images away. She
wanted Tremaines, he’d find her Tremaines.

*****

It was a hundred miles into
Fallon. She’d been so anxious to get away, she hadn’t eaten
breakfast. Since she was flush, at least for a minute, she decided
to stoke up on some of Jake’s steak and eggs. Maggie O’Brian’s rig
clattered into the dirt parking lot next to the diner. The
four-horse trailer was one of those old iron slat jobs where the
horses were tied in at an angle. It made a God-awful racket when it
was empty. Truck wasn’t exactly new either. Ford F250, vintage
1970. But the big 390 diesel did the job. You couldn’t see much of
the faded red paint under all the dust anyway, so the dings and
dents didn’t matter.

She climbed out of the cab. A
kick-ass black Harley with minimum chrome and scarred leather
saddlebags leaned on its stand in front of the diner windows, no
doubt so the owner could keep an eye on it. Covered with road grit
and sporting a couple of dings itself, it wasn’t a Sunday afternoon
ride for some rich Hell’s Angel wannabe. That bike had seen action.
Maggie pulled open the ancient screen door.

The only people in the diner at
this hour were usually locals. It was too early for tourists in the
“living ghost town,” of Austin, Nevada. The counter was filled with
single old guys, leaving only one empty seat next to a really
broad-shouldered man. He was the youngest guy in the diner by
probably forty years. She didn’t recognize him. He must be the
owner of the cycle. His black leather jacket was slung over the low
back of the barstool, leaving a faded blue work shirt, longish
black hair, and some three-day stubble the only things she could
see.

Maggie felt something go down
her spine.

She shook herself and squeezed
onto the stool between the big guy and one of the geezers. The
young guy seemed even bigger up close with that shoulder looming
over her. He exuded testosterone and, well, some sort of danger.
Bet he did well in bar fights. He had that “I don’t care what
happens” attitude. And wow, close up, he was really doing something
to her. What was
that
all about? Pheromones?

Get hold of yourself, girl.

He sipped his coffee. What a
profile. Classic good looks.

She did
so
not care about
that. She saw him glance at her out of the corner of his eye. A
healing cut slanting over his eyebrow and pink, shiny skin on his
cheek indicated that he’d been in a scrape. To another woman, he
would have been intimidating. Another woman would have taken a
booth. But she was in no danger. He wouldn’t even notice someone
like her. Plain, tough as nails, no makeup, dusty jeans. That was
Maggie O’Brian. Take it or leave it.

Mainly they left it. Just the
way she wanted it.

“Hey, Jake,” she called to the
guy in the white apron and the paper hat through the window to the
kitchen.

“Maggie!” Jake glanced up from
his griddle, grinning. He had jowls and squinting, kind eyes. “You
look like shit, darlin’. You okay?”

“Boy, you make a girl feel like
a million bucks. Just drove in from Cheyenne.”

“All night?”

“Grabbed a couple hours sleep at
Elroy’s. Gotta get over to Fallon.”

“You win?” Ethel, the waitress,
must be seventy-five if she was a day in spite of her bright orange
hair. Her face was folded in a thousand wrinkles.

“You bet your ass.”
Tough as
nails, that’s me.
She made a point of telling herself that a
lot—a fact that wasn’t lost on her. She wasn’t stupid. Fake it ’til
you make it.

Jake whistled approval. Ethel
put down the plates she carried in front of the old coot three
seats down and gave Maggie a whoop and a high five. “I’ll get you
the usual, honey.”

The guy next to her shifted on
his stool to look directly at her. “What’d you win?” he asked in
the deepest baritone she could remember hearing. She was a sucker
for deep voices. She glanced over and couldn’t help a double take.
Damn, but that was one good-looking man. Green, green eyes,
eyelashes a mile long, cleft chin, fair skin. Had some old scars as
well as the recent scabs. He’d knocked around some, like his cycle.
The dark hair curling over his collar and his three-day stubble
made him seem even tougher. Only his lips looked soft. He belonged
on movie posters, but he might be playing either the hero or the
villain.

Way out of her league. Like she
had a league.

“Women’s bull riding.” She
pulled up the coffee cup Ethel had plunked down in front of her.
“Cheyenne Rodeo Days.”

“You look kind of, uh, small to
be riding bulls.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Always
surprises the crowd when I win. Promoters like that.”

“She wins a lot,” Ethel sniffed.
Ethel was okay.

“Much money in it?” the old man
on the far side of the looker asked.

Maggie shrugged. “Not for women.
Enough to make the next entry fee, stay on the road.”
Sometimes
pay the mortgage.

“You like staying on the road.”
This from the looker.

“If that’s your bike, you do
too,” she snapped.

His brows arched in surprise,
but his lips didn’t smile. “Got me there. What drives you to it?”
Just as she was about to lie to him he said, “And don’t tell me
it’s wanderlust or some bullshit like that. There’s always a real
reason.”

She snapped her mouth closed.
She owed this guy jack. But she found herself answering anyway.
“Family.”

“Yeah,” he grunted, turning
away. She couldn’t see the look in his eyes. “I get that one.”

She sipped her coffee. Had he
just admitted something personal? She could feel his big body next
to her. The heat, sure, but something more too. She couldn’t say
just what.

“So … Fallon. What’s there?” His
words came out reluctantly. He was having steak and eggs too. The
sleeves of his shirt were rolled to his elbows. He had dark,
straight hair on his forearms. She couldn’t help watching the
muscles work as he cut the steak. “Rodeo?”

She sucked in a breath. “Uh, no.
Mustang sale at Indian River Ranch.”

“How many you gonna take this
time?” Ethel asked.

“I figure eight.” They wanted
more, but her trailer only held four. It would be two long trips
just to get eight down to LA.

“What’ll you do with eight wild
horses?” The guy seemed amused.

That annoyed her. “Take them to
a camp for disabled kids that can’t afford to buy the kind of
horses rich kids get from their parents.”

A brief flash of something that
looked like guilt flashed over his face and was gone. Then he
frowned. “You got it in for disabled kids?”

Maggie had an urge to smack him.
Or pull him down by his hair and kiss him.
Whoa, girl. Disaster
for someone like you.
Before she could act on either impulse,
Ethel intervened.

“She’s got a waiting list of
camps, mister. Must work out okay.”

He sat back in his chair, still
frowning. “Maybe the old, broken-down ones….”

“Steak and eggs, up,” Jake
yelled, though Ethel was only six feet away. Ethel turned to the
window and slid the plate over to Maggie, followed by a side of
sourdough toast.

“Nope,” Maggie said, her mouth
tight as she stabbed the steak and sawed the knife across it. “The
old ones go out to contract retirement places. Big pastures, good
care. They’re fine. The young ones get sold to private buyers,
resellers, or the job program that teaches prisoners horse
training.” Maggie’s gut began to churn. “Which leaves the
incorrigibles. No reputable trainer will buy them. They scare
individual buyers. Won’t halter. Won’t trailer, so they don’t make
it to pasture. They end up meat, no matter how hard BLM tries to
stop it. Or they get put down.”

The guy frowned. “So,
those
are the ones you take?”

Maggie sighed. When she started
talking about the mustangs, she always got carried away. Why did
she even feel like she had to explain to this guy? She stabbed a
piece of steak. “Yup.”

“Oh, that makes me feel better
for the disabled kids.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” That
should shut him up. She didn’t want to hear that baritone anymore.
It was doing funny things to her in places that had forgotten how
to do those things a long time ago.

“I might surprise you.”

His statement itself surprised
her. Why did he insist? It wasn’t like he cared. Time to get tough.
“I doubt it. I know your kind.” Rude, but she needed to control
this situation.

He blinked twice. For an
instant, she saw hurt and maybe confusion flash across his
expression. Then he turned to his plate like he was slamming a
door. “Yeah. You probably do.” She had an inexplicable urge to
apologize, to say she hadn’t meant what she said. That was crazy.
How was this guy getting to her like that? She knew better than to
let her guard down.

So she bantered with Jake and
Ethel just to show she didn’t care. She teased the old guy two
stools over who’d eaten at Jake’s every day for twenty years, since
his wife died. But she was hyper-aware of the man next to her. She
felt every shift in his weight on the stool, every clench of the
muscles in his jaw as he ate. What the hell was wrong with her? He
dawdled over his hash browns and asked for a refill on coffee even
after Ethel had taken his plate away. But he seemed nervous. Kept
adjusting himself on the barstool. Couldn’t he just leave?