Magical Weddings (20 page)

****

Colleen struggled with lace napkin number 77 out of 103 in inventory. She’d used magic; she’d used a steam iron. She’d even rewetted the cloth and fed it through the mangle again. Some wrinkles just did not want to come out. She closed her eyes and concentrated.

Focus. Leave everything else out there to worry about later. Just see the napkin smooth and perfect.

Lightly, she dragged her fingers along the stubborn fold line that wouldn’t release, and murmured a brief chant.

There
.

Opened her eyes.

Finding two wrinkles instead of one.

“Agh!”

She snatched up the napkin and wadded it in a ball, the tightest, most furious ball of delicate lace she could manage.

How could he?

Betrayal flowed from her as would blood from an open wound, and Drayhome soaked up that disappointment, sharing in it. All morning the house had groaned and shifted.

How could Ax be working with them?

With another irritated cry she flung the abused linen into a corner, not caring if it landed where it might be stained beyond redemption. Walking at a near run, she left the laundry room, raced up the stairs and hurried toward the kitchen. Just before she reached her usual refuge, she heard Derby, the caterer, giving orders to Lawrence, his neighbor and wedding helper where to set this box of mushrooms or that case of wine.

They’re here already?

When had they arrived and how had she missed something like that,
again
?

Drayhome wasn’t paying attention to what went on within its walls, and neither was she. Microtremors too low on the Richter scale for most to feel shook the floors beneath her feet. More than once, she’d caught someone grabbing for a hand hold, unsteady on their feet, though they didn’t understand the ground beneath their feet could no longer be trusted.

As time grew closer and closer to the ceremony, the house had filled up, more and more people impinging on Colleen’s psychic space, more people she had to force herself to chat with and smile at and all the while she wanted to crawl into a hole and cry.

It hurt to talk, to nod, to listen.

Mia’s back-up floral help whisked buckets of flowers through the halls toward arranging stations. She’d recruited another warlock to help with the heavy lifting in Ax’s absence. The cake, a nine-tier lavender confection covered in fondant flowers spelled to sprout, grow, bud and bloom before guests’ eyes, arrived and was carried toward the ballroom with the gravity of a royal paraded by litter bearers.

During breaks between ordering others about, Lysée worked on several of the old wedding magicks brought down from the attics, including her famous key box. In appearance it was deceptively simple, hand-carved, with an organic shape, no sharp corners. Out of curiosity, Colleen stopped briefly to peek inside. Keys filled it to the lid, of the right types to fit into Drayhome’s many locked doors, but when she picked one up, she sensed nothing.

“That’s because I have to recharge them,” Lysée said over her shoulder, surprising her.

Colleen dropped the lid with a snap. “Oh,” she said.

Shelley commandeered the help of a small coven of witches to ferry a not too-surprising assortment of antique garments down from the attic. Colleen doubted most, if any of the clothing was for the wedding. Though she hadn’t confided in anyone about Drayhome’s fate—officially all anyone knew was that she and Ax had argued—gossip was difficult to stop. Some here were bound to know the truth. They were done with Drayhome once the wedding concluded. Shelley was probably taking while the taking was good.

Ax’s chore list had been left unfinished. True to his fast work and ability to prioritize, the most crucial tasks had been completed. However, this still left several items not typically tackled until the last hours, and to get those done she’d had to beg for assistance. Lysée aided her there, bringing in even more people than Colleen’s already fragile nerves could handle.

She dashed through the kitchen, not stopping to even acknowledge Derby, banged through the side door and out into the open, finally coming to a halt in the middle of the driveway.

Out. She just had to escape it, the interaction with too many, Drayhome’s suffocating anxiety.

Bent over at the waist, hands on thighs and hyperventilating, Colleen sought calm. Her life as she knew it was coming to an end, and still she was expected to perform. Thoughts scurried around in her head finding no rest or order. She didn’t trust anyone but Ax, a major mistake on her part, especially now that it was too late. It wasn’t that Lysée or Shelley or Mia weren’t trustworthy, far from it. Colleen didn’t trust herself to communicate clearly enough, speak persuasively enough. Ax understood what she said, even when she didn’t understand herself, but would others?

She blamed Ax for the coming end, but she blamed herself more. She’d lived too many years isolating herself from others to know what was normal and what not. Wrapped up in cotton of her own making, she’d always been afraid to speak up on Drayhome’s behalf.

Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Isn’t it?

Maybe she was wrong to believe abandoning their spiritual home a travesty. If she told someone, and she was the only who held that opinion, would they tell Ramsay Wise what she’d said? Would she be in trouble? In danger?

No. She was the translator between this place, the lake of pure magic that lay hidden beneath it, and everyone else.

You’ve had one job. One job and you couldn’t get that right
.

Colleen started walking again, following the driveway deeper into the property. She stepped up the pace to a race walk, and then a jog, a run, and then an all out panicked sprint.

What do I do? What? Someone tell me, please
.

For almost forty years, she’d thrown every bit of magic in her at preserving the estate, not just its timbers and stone, its walls, foundation and roof, but the soul of the place. She’d done her best, tried her damndest to keep the flame alive, always coming up short, always inadequate. She couldn’t begin to touch what Drayhome showed her Spirit could do with negligible effort and a casual flick of a hand.

I’m. Not. Spirit
.

No one was. She had to accept reality. Drayhome was just too much for one, non-elemental witch to handle alone.

During the gap between Spirit’s disappearance and Colleen’s arrival here, no other witch or warlock had possessed the ability to bond with the house. The estate had gone through a series of temporary caretakers who complained of rogue magic fighting their attempts to keep the house in order. Walls literally coming apart, stairs collapsing, sections of the roof cracking open to let in the rain, floors that gave way and doors that refused to shut.

She had a theory she’d never shared with anyone for fear they’d think she was out of her mind, that the house missed its creator. She believed it had spent those intervening years mourning, raging, and sulking. It felt betrayed by Spirit’s sudden disappearance and acted out, punishing anyone who lacked the specific talent required to understand its needs. And then Colleen, technically a hearth witch, but one with an extra kick to her gallop, had come along, able to hear Drayhome’s desperate pleas, to touch and interact with the place magic animating it. Yet she’d proved only slightly better suited to the job of caretaker than those who had failed before her.

Leaving was probably for the best. The house didn’t need someone who could hear it but not care for it properly or even communicate its wants.

Damn, Spirit, come back to us. If you’re still alive, come home
.

Spirit had to be dead, no other explanation fit. No one who could create the magnificence that was Drayhome and the inherent goodness infused in its bones, who could transform a collection of rooms into the personification of who they were as a people, would just take off without a word, leaving the seat of that much power unwatched and unguarded.

Runyon and The Priest did have that right. Drayhome was vulnerable. As far as she knew, it had always been out there for all to see, human and witch alike. Why was that? Was he unable to conceal a place with this much latent power invested in it? Or had he not even tried? Could Spirit have constructed the house that way intentionally, to be forever visible? Was it his plan to always maintain at least one place where their world and the human world would intersect? Too many of The Rede seemed to have forgotten a vital part of their existence was to aid the humans of Breens Mist whenever they could. Hiding away in the house, a social phobic, she was just as guilty of that as any. Maybe more. By abandoning Drayhome, The Rede effectively abandoned humankind, and thus abdicated their responsibilities to them.

It’s wrong. Really wrong
.
We shouldn’t be doing this
.

Perhaps even more disastrous was what might happen if she wasn’t here to watch after the house. How would it deal with their total rejection of it? Could it become a danger to its new owners, the humans?

I doubt The Priest cares about that
.

She did.

Out of breath, Colleen slowed her frantic pace, discovering she’d covered more ground than she’d thought. She halted on the shore of the small pond where a day ago she’d fantasized a rowboat tipping into sun-drenched waters, buzzing with dragonflies and sex.

Ax
.

Her lungs ached with exertion and underneath that, his betrayal.

Why? Why side with the conclave over her and Drayhome?

Be practical
.

Her own gift couldn’t begin to challenge Ramsay Wise’s power. Ax was strong, but did she really expect him to fare any better against The Priest? He’d obviously come to that conclusion long before she did.

Sadly, being sensible didn’t lessen the hurt.

****

Ax recognized the chill at his back. He paused on the steps of the old Edwardian mansion that housed the Breens Mist Library to study the watery grey horizon. No serious storm clouds yet, but Lysée’s predictions about the weather were spot on. Wedding day was destined to see snow.

He pulled open the library door, passed under the home’s original crystal chandelier in the entry and headed straight for the stairs leading to the basement. Reggie bent over a massive handbound book open on a reading table in the section of the stacks inaccessible to humans. Not surprisingly he was a bookish warlock. Though fastidiously maintained, his clothes were decades out of fashion, baggy, cuffed trousers and a dress shirt with collar stays and cuff links. Gold, wire-rimmed glasses curled around the backs of his ears and his fine, blonde hair fell into his face, hiding the look of intense concentration Ax knew was there. So focused was Reggie on the crabbed, vinegar-brown handwriting filling a page near the front of the book, he didn’t hear Ax approach.

Ax clapped the warlock’s shoulder. Reggie usually spasmed when startled. For a split second he shot for the ceiling, his butt lifting half an inch out of the chair.

“Good Christ, Ax. A little warning perhaps?”

“Sorry, Reginald,” Ax said. “Come up with anything yet?”

“Yes. Definitely. It can be done. It won’t be easy, and I’ll have to call in another records talent to help if we’re going to have it ready in time. That will add to the expense.”

“What you need and how you choose to pay any subcontractors is up to you,” Ax said. “I just need it done.”

“You know payment has to be commiserate with the services rendered,” Reggie said.

“I understand.”

“It’s not my call. It’s the established price schedule.”

“I’m offering a home for a home. Fifth floor of the Gower Building on 6th.”

“Your loft? Are you sure?”

Ax knew Reggie inhabited a forgotten cubby around here somewhere, likely as windowless and smelling of damp as the rest of the basement.

“Thought you’d enjoy not living like a mole for a change. You won’t find a sweeter view of…” What would motivate him the most? “…the library,” he said. “Besides, there’s a good chance I won’t be needing a place after tomorrow.”

Reggie wasn’t dense. He understood the subtext instantly. After several moments, he nodded grimly. “It’s a deal.”

“What about you? Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Ax said.

“The proverbial,
hell, yes
. He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”

Reggie wasn’t known for swearing, not even something as mild as
damn
or
hell
, so Ax knew he felt what he said deeply.

“He’ll know you were involved. There might be–”

“–repercussions?” Reginald said with an admirable dose of self-conceit. “I’m aware. But Drayhome belongs with us.”

Good old Reggie, blissfully unconcerned The Priest could fry his innards. Ax guessed being an intellectual did that for him. His mind seldom dwelled on scenarios outside its storehouse of more abstract information.

“Don’t forget to return the deeds register before the county clerk discovers you’ve
borrowed
it. Any question of tampering and we’re up shits–”

Reggie flicked him an annoyed glance and returned to scrutinizing the page in front of him. “I thought you said you weren’t going to tell me how to do my job?” he said.

“How long are you going to make him stand there?” Lysée asked.

Colleen and Ax engaged in a quasi-staring match, she watching him from the window bay at the front of the house overlooking the drive, Ax at the end of that drive, one pace back from the property line, standing in the road. Their face off had gone on for an hour and—she looked at the ormolu clock on the mantle to her left—eighteen minutes, which was when she’d first noticed him there. For all she knew, he might have been there since daybreak. She’d come and gone from the window, hurrying from one last minute preparation to another, until the last half hour, during which she’d lingered in the window, tasting her anger to be certain it was still strong. Lysée now stood beside her, disturbed and concerned by what she saw. Normally a French sirocco of activity herself, Lysée hadn’t strayed from Colleen’s side since she’d come across the slow-motion confrontation between she and Ax fifteen minutes before.