Completely Smitten (13 page)

To his surprise, tough old Evelyn blushed. He wondered what she’d said about Andrew Vari, the most colorful mountain man of them all.

“It’s okay,” Ariel said, swinging herself between them. She had learned how to wield those crutches in the past week. “I’ll pay for the trip. It’s my expense. You obviously didn’t know about it.”

He glared at her. The last thing he wanted her to do was pay for anything. His treat, but he couldn’t seem kind about it. How to take care of her and push her away? He had no idea.

“Look, lady, I’m richer than Croesus.” Not that Croesus was all that rich. But no one still alive knew that except maybe a handful of other mages, most of whom liked to keep up the rumors of Croesus’s wealth. “I can pay for this.”

“But it’s my expense,” she said.

“Really? It’s on my bill.”

“Put there by a person you don’t know.”

He gave Ariel a sideways grin. “No matter what lies she’s told you, I’ve known Evelyn for years.”

Ariel’s mouth thinned. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant, honey. It doesn’t matter who decided to put it on my bill. I’ll pay it and you save your money. Or better yet, put it toward food. You look like you need some.”

She looked startled again. Was no one ever rude to this woman?

“I’ll pay it,” she said to Evelyn.

Evelyn shook her head. “He can do it. Since he’s being so rude in other ways.”

“I don’t take charity,” Ariel said.

“Consider it payment, then,” Darius said.

“For what?” Ariel asked.

“Shutting up and leaving me alone.” He turned away from her and walked through the waiting area to the main door. The brown and gold shag carpet, matted from years of use and neglect, would slow her down.

Behind him, he heard Ariel sigh in exasperation. “Mr. Vari, doesn’t it bother you that some stranger used your home?”

“No,” he said. “Now that I’ve met you, I forgive you.”

“I didn’t mean me,” she said.

He put his hand on the glass door, uttered a small spell so that his exit wouldn’t be ruined by weight and wind, and then faced her. “Exactly what part of ‘shut up and leave me’ alone did you not understand?”

Her eyebrows went down in an elaborate frown. She opened her mouth to answer him, but he didn’t wait for her words. Instead, he let himself out into the storm.

The wind buffeted him to the side and thunder boomed overhead. The rain was coming down in sheets. He patted his pockets for his car keys, realized he’d left them on the table in the house, and spelled them to his hand.

His steamer trunk sat in the rain behind his Mercedes. Duke had at least gotten it that far.

There was no sign of Duke anywhere, and the women were watching Darius from the inside of the building. He couldn’t spell the trunk into the trunk. He would have to do it the old-fashioned, embarrassing way.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. He couldn’t be elegant or sophisticated in this body. Even competent was hard.

He popped the car’s trunk and stared at the steamer. Sometimes his sense of history got him in trouble. He liked using a steamer trunk most of the time, the stickers on it, the weight. He’d been using this one for more than a hundred years, and never before had it put him in a position like this one.

Oh, well. Watching him struggle with it would give Ariel a good laugh. If she despised him before, she’d probably hold him in contempt now.

Through the glass door, Ariel watched the little man struggle to put his steamer trunk in his car. The trunk didn’t seem heavy as much as awkward. It was twice as big as he was, and wider as well. Yet he managed to lift it toward the car, staggering left, then right, as he tried to shove it inside.

“We should help him,” Ariel said.

“You mean I should help him,” Evelyn said.

“Or find Duke, maybe.”

Evelyn snorted. “After that stupid discussion, I’m not helping him with anything. Vari’s always been obnoxious and rude, but I never took him for a bar before.”

Ariel looked at her. This entire meeting had left her unsettled. She had that same feeling around Vari that she’d had around Darius, as if he were going to say one thing when he would actually say another.

“What do you mean?”

“I talked to him,” Evelyn said. “I know it was him. After twenty years on that horn, I don’t make mistakes about the regulars. And no one can imitate that voice.”

Ariel remembered the throat-clearing, the curse, and the whistling. She wasn’t sure if she believed Evelyn or not.

“If he hadn’t radioed in, then he wouldn’t’ve paid for the plane trip. And he’s nervous as a mountain goat about letting people into his place. He should’ve been bothered by it.”

Ariel glanced outside. He’d gotten the steamer halfway into his car’s trunk. Now he was pushing on it with his tiny shoulder. The rain that hadn’t touched him before was drenching him now. His crisp white suit looked like clingy pajamas that were one size too big.

“Maybe if we help him, he’ll tell us what’s going on,” she said.

“Naw.” Evelyn crossed to her desk, picked up the paper that Vari had tossed, and sat down. “People keep secrets up here. Maybe he was meeting that guy for a reason.”

“Like what?”

“How do I know? Maybe they’re lovers, or maybe the guy’s on the lam from something. Murder or evading child support or running drugs. It could be anything.”

Ariel remembered the passion in that kiss. “They’re not lovers.”

Evelyn gave her a sideways look. “Then the guy’s probably on the run, and you got mixed up in something you shouldn’t have.”

Vari was still shoving the trunk into the trunk. “I’m going to go ask him,” Ariel said.

“I wouldn’t,” Evelyn said. “You don’t know what kind of people live up here.”

“I met Dar,” Ariel said. “He saved my life.”

“Yeah, and like as not would kill you if you got in his way.”

Ariel shook her head. “Well, he’s not here and Andrew Vari is. He won’t hurt me. He can’t.”

Evelyn raised her eyebrows. “It’s clear you haven’t talked to him much.”

Ariel ignored that. She crossed the tile and swung herself onto the carpet. That was slower going. It wasn’t as flat as it had initially seemed. Her crutches caught in it. Or actually, Vari’s crutches, if his story was to be believed. Darius had given her Vari’s crutches.

Although that made no sense. The crutches were bigger than Vari was.

She reached the door. Vari had climbed onto his bumper and was using his entire body to shove the trunk forward. She grabbed the door handle, and only at that moment did she realize that she was going to have the same problem she had before.

“Evelyn,” she said, “would you mind—?”

“Yes.” But Evelyn got up anyway. Ariel stood aside as Evelyn pulled the door open. The wind caught it and slammed it against the wall. Rain drummed on the concrete.

“I’d rethink this,” Evelyn said.

Ariel went out anyway. She wasn’t afraid of the elements. She’d raced in weather like this. She swam in the Pacific, all the way to Alcatraz and back, in weather like this. She could hobble across a parking lot.

She was halfway to Vari’s car when the wind rose again. The steamer trunk seemed to shrink slightly, then slide into the car. It was almost as if one of the trunks had been reformed to fit the other.

Vari slammed the car’s trunk shut, then jumped off the bumper like a kid jumping into a pond—arms raised, legs bent. He looked almost exuberant.

When he landed, he ran to the driver’s side and slid in.

“Mr. Vari!” she shouted, but he slammed the door behind him and started the car almost at the same instant.

The car’s reverse lights went on, and he backed the thing up so fast, it took her a moment to wonder how he was driving it. She knew his feet couldn’t hit the pedals, not when his tiny arm was hugging the back seat as he looked out the rear window.

The Mercedes stopped just short of her—as she somehow knew it would—and then went forward, out of the parking lot, spraying water in all directions. Somehow it missed her.

Then the car turned onto the highway and zoomed away, too fast for her to follow.

She did get a look at the license plate, though. She didn’t get the numbers, but she got the state.

Oregon. There couldn’t be a lot of Andrew Varis in that small state.

She stared at the now empty highway, rain flowing down her face. She got the very real sense that Andrew Vari was running away from her.

Maybe she had gotten closer than she thought. Maybe her initial sense of him had been right. Maybe he was a kind man, and lying to her had been painful to him.

His words had belied that, but his actions hadn’t. He paid for the plane flight, after all.

She leaned on her crutches. “Andrew Vari from Oregon,” she said, “I’m not done with you yet.”

Nine

Darius drove like a demon until he reached Smith’s Ferry, which was little more than a general store and a dot on the map. At least, that was how it had been for decades. Now a small development was attracting crazy Boiseans who didn’t mind the commute or wanted to escape what passed for city life in a town that would barely qualify as a Los Angeles suburb.

He was a master at using the hand controls on the column to make the car function better than it would if he were using the accelerator and brake on the floor. His fingers were a lot more dexterous than his feet.

He parked the Mercedes in front of the general store— at least that hadn’t changed much—and got out. The store was long and made of unpainted wood, with a wooden sidewalk in front of it.

The interior had the peculiar sweet odor of old candy, fresh plastic, and spilled soda. Tourist gew-gaws like painted mugs and bumper stickers filled the shelves nearest the window. Expensive groceries lined the remaining shelves, with cigarettes and magazines wrapped in brown paper on a shelf behind the counter.

A young girl, who had to be twenty-one because of the cigarettes and the sign warning in big bold letters that this store checked I.D!, leaned on the counter, reading the
National Enquirer
and twisting her long brown hair around one finger. She didn’t look up as he walked past. She probably hadn’t even seen him.

As he drove, he had spelled his white suit, changing it into a pair of blue jeans and a sweatshirt, the sleeves rolled up over his powerful arms. He also put on boots. He wasn’t willing to drive in a storm like this dressed for summer heat.

His clothes as Andrew Vari were always flamboyant, a deliberate rebellion against the appearance the Fates had given him. If people were going to notice him anyway, he wanted to give them something to comment about besides his height. Clothes always did that.

He went deeper into the store, looking for something to snack on. He wasn’t really hungry, just restless. He had to get out of that car. Inside it, all he could see through the rain cascading down his windshield was Ariel’s surprised face as he backed toward her.

If she had gotten any closer to him, he would have talked with her and told her everything. So to prevent that, he shrank the steamer trunk, shoved it inside the car, and then hurried out of there faster than humanly possible.

He hoped no one noticed that part.

He had driven as far as he felt he needed to. There was no way she could catch him now, even if she had somehow flown to her car, which she couldn’t do, not on those crutches. He had a few minutes now, anyway, and he meant to use them.

He needed them.

All that magic use had exhausted him. It had probably taken years from his long life. These past ten days, instead of being restful, had actually used more of his magic and his energy than the previous year had—and he had done quite a few parlor tricks to assist Emma and Michael in their budding romance.

And then there was the matter of the tiny mistakes he’d made. The broken ankle, the amount of time it took for the protect spell to kick in on the plane, the difficulty he had with the steamer trunk—none of that should have happened. All of those spells should have been easy, smooth.

After more than a thousand years, he found himself in need of a familiar. The last time had been disastrous. He didn’t want to be burdened with an animal, but he would need one.

Maybe his search for it would take his mind off Ariel and his so-called vacation in the mountains.

And how very rude he had been to her. At least she didn’t know that the Andrew Vari who had been so mean to her was really Darius. There was some small comfort in that.

“Hey, kid!” the girl said from the counter.

He sighed. He hated it when people made that mistake.

“Kid, come out where I can see you.”

He waved his fingers in front of his mouth, creating a half-smoked cigar. Then he stepped into the aisle.

“What?” he said, making his stupid nasal voice as deep as it would go.

The girl studied him for a minute. She was so completely taken aback that her mouth hung open. “I-I-I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t realize …”

She let the sentence hang between them. Good manners dictated that he speak next, accepting her apology and then allowing them to both move forward, he to buy what he wanted, she to blush in private.

He wasn’t in the mood to be polite.

“I mean,” she said when he didn’t fill the silence, “all I saw was movement.”

“Short movement.”

She shrugged, her blush deepening.

“And you equate short with children.”

“Well, usually,” she said.

“I have news for you, Einstein,” he said, “I haven’t been a child in more than two thousand years.”

She bit her upper lip, then offered him a small smile. “You don’t look that old.”

He had no idea why he was being truthful lately. Maybe it was a continued reaction to his time with Ariel. Or maybe it was because he’d had a conversation with someone he’d known his entire life—as rare as that was.

“I feel that old today,” he said and walked back into the aisle. There he grabbed some beef jerky, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and some Rolaids. Then he went to the cooler and removed two bottles of water. He had trouble carrying it all to the counter, and even more trouble placing it there.