“They’ll be busy,” I said with a shrug.
Fortunately, the honeymoon suite wasn’t visible through the office’s front windows, so we were able to get Owen and Merlin inside without anyone wondering why I was going on a honeymoon with three men, one of them old enough to be my grandfather. Once we got them inside, Ethan and I took our time unloading the car.
When I got my first good look at the room, I realized that Ethan had understated the situation. “Tacky” didn’t begin to describe the place. For one thing, just about everything in the room was either red or pink—or mirrored. The few parts of the walls that weren’t covered in mirrors were covered in a pink, shiny fabric. The bed was round, in the middle of the room, and draped in a red satin spread, with piles of pink and red pillows. There was a mirror on the ceiling over the bed. The lighting fixtures must have been found at Liberace’s garage sale. They dripped with crystals and fake gilding.
“Oh, my,” was all I could say. This really wasn’t the kind of place where you wanted to spend the weekend with your boss.
“There’s also a kitchen,” Ethan said. “And a heart-shaped hot tub. Too bad I didn’t bring a swimsuit.”
“This is ideal,” Merlin said. “Thank you, Mr. Wainwright.”
Ethan and I turned to stare at him.
“The mirrors will be helpful in some of the work we have to do,” Owen explained while avoiding looking at himself in any of the mirrors. He still looked pretty awful, so I could imagine that facing that image wasn’t fun for him.
“Maybe you two should sleep now and get to work in the morning,” I suggested. “You still look pretty fried.”
“Probably a good idea,” Owen agreed, sinking to sit on the bed and rubbing his temples. “Wow, I didn’t realize how bad that buzzing in my head was until it stopped.”
“So you’re feeling better?”
“Yeah, but it’s more like the week after you have the flu, when you’re not sick anymore, but you still don’t feel well.”
We let Owen and Merlin take the bed, since they’d been sick and were the ones who’d be working. I tried to convince Ethan to take the sofa, since he’d been driving, but he swore it was too short for him and he’d be more comfortable dozing in a chair. The two wizards were still sound asleep when Ethan and I woke the next morning and slipped out to pick up some breakfast.
They were up and hard at work when we got back, and I thought I’d have to confiscate the books to get Owen to stop working long enough to eat. Hours later, there were pages of notes in Owen’s textbook-perfect handwriting scattered all over the room. When he and Merlin seemed to have come to an agreement, Owen said, “We’ll need some supplies for a spell to pinpoint what’s going on.” He handed me a sheet of paper. “I doubt there are any magic supply shops nearby, but you can probably find some reasonable substitutes. Where I thought of obvious ones, I made a note.”
“Maybe you should come with me,” I said, skimming the page.
“You’ll do fine. I’ve got some things to work out.” And then he buried his nose again in his book.
Ethan handed me his credit card. “Here, use this. There’s a shop off the motel lobby that seemed to have a good variety of stuff, and they think you’re my wife, anyway. I’d better stay here and keep an eye on them.” Then he handed me his car keys. “But if you need to go elsewhere, you can take my car.” I wasn’t sure which was the bigger responsibility, getting the right ingredients for a spell to help save the magical world, or driving Ethan’s Mercedes.
I took another look at Owen’s list so I could decide where to look. He needed candles and several kinds of herbs, some of which were the kind you cooked with and some that weren’t. He also wanted a map of Manhattan—which, if I knew Ethan, would be in his car’s glove compartment—a metallic powder, a compass (something else I suspected would be in the glove compartment, unless it was built into the car’s navigation system), aspirin, air freshener spray, several ashtrays, and salt. I couldn’t begin to imagine what spell he was going to MacGyver with all that stuff, but I thought I’d first try the motel shop.
I expected the typical motel shop—a cross between a convenience store and a souvenir shop stocked with necessities like aspirin in overpriced small containers, razors, and toothbrushes, as well as travel-related and souvenir items, like maps, postcards, and T-shirts and spoons with slogans about the local area.
This wasn’t that kind of shop.
Chapter Ten
This was the kind of shop that wouldn’t even be possible in my hometown. Let’s just say it catered to the honeymooning customer. If you looked in the mirror on the ceiling over your bed and thought you’d look better with body glitter, then you could dash across the parking lot and get it, along with several varieties of flavored lotions and powders, feathers in every color of the rainbow, bubble bath to use in that heart-shaped tub, and, of course, edible underwear, in case you worked up an appetite.
The motel’s manager came over from the office, and she noticed me before I could sneak away. “Hi there, how can I help you?” she asked.
I backed away a step or two. “Um, well, I was looking for some things, but this probably isn’t the right shop for me.”
“Oh, you’re the new wife from that couple who checked in late last night, aren’t you? Eloped, your husband said. I guess if you were in such a hurry, you must have forgotten something.”
Ah, so that was the story Ethan had told about why he wanted a honeymoon suite and hadn’t made a reservation. “Yeah, that would be us. And I did forget a few things.” I gave the display a sidelong glance and shuddered. “But not those kinds of things.”
She laughed heartily. “Don’t worry about the up-front merchandise. That’s just for show. I’ve got all kinds of stuff. What do you need?”
I looked at the list again, and there actually was an off chance that this shop would stock some of it. “I need some candles—but nothing scented. White if you’ve got them.”
“Of course we’ve got candles. Come on over here.” She led me to the other side of the store, which looked more like the motel shop I’d been expecting. “Candlelight in all those mirrors is very flattering. It makes your skin glow, and it hides a lot of figure flaws. Just don’t burn your room down,” she added with a wink.
She pointed at a shelf full of candles in ceramic holders. They all had various bride and groom figures and the legend “Our honeymoon in the Poconos.” Oh yeah, that was
exactly
what I wanted to buy to use with my boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend, and my boss, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. The woman got me a shopping basket and I put four of the candles in there.
“Do you need some matches?” the woman asked.
Owen could start fires with a snap of his fingers, so I shook my head and said, “No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
“Anything else you need?”
I felt my cheeks burn as I realized that the body glitter might work as the metallic powder Owen had asked for. “Some of that body glitter would be good,” I said, unable to meet the woman’s eyes.
“What color do you want?”
I had no idea. He hadn’t specified. “Oh, I don’t know…”
“I bet gold would look good on you, especially in the candlelight,” she said after giving me a long, appraising stare.
“Um, okay, sure,” I mumbled. Owen would owe me for this, big time.
“Is that all?”
Since I was already there, I thought I might as well see what else I could come up with. “Can I just browse for a while?”
“Sure. Let me know if you need anything. Or if you need any ideas. Trust me, I’ve been married for thirty years. I know how to keep things spicy.”
I was suddenly very glad Owen had made me go on my own. I might survive the mortification, but if he’d been there, I wouldn’t have been able to look him in the eye ever again, assuming he survived the stroke he’d have had. I checked the list. Owen wanted fennel, marigold, rosemary, and peppermint, as well as cloves and anise. I couldn’t imagine finding all that here, but I might as well look. Among the bath products was a package labeled “Bath Herbs for Lovers.” I picked it up and read the ingredient label. It contained fennel, marigold, rosemary, and peppermint, along with a few other things like orange blossom and rose petals. I wondered if that would work and threw the package in my basket.
Owen hadn’t specified what scent air freshener he wanted, so I took a bottle of room spray in “mountain fresh.” Back in the less embarrassing gift shop part of the store, I found some souvenir bowls of potpourri. One shaped like a heart smelled of anise and clove, so I put that in the basket. I also picked up several “Souvenir of the Poconos” ashtrays. At the very back of the shop was the convenience store that I expected to find in a motel, and there I got a couple of plastic salt shakers and a travel-sized tin of aspirin.
The woman gave a low whistle when I went to check out. “Well, well, well, you’ve got some honeymoon planned, haven’t you?” she said, waggling her eyebrows. “You didn’t need my help, after all. Not that I judge. Whatever floats your boat, I always say. But this is definitely unusual.”
“Yeah, well, we are from New York,” I said with a shrug.
“Oh,” she said, as if that explained everything. “You do know the room is nonsmoking, right? I allow candles, but I draw the line at cigarettes,” she said as she wrapped the ashtrays in paper.
“Those are just souvenirs,” I said. “Gifts for some relatives.”
“Okay, then.” She leaned forward across the counter and gave me a leering wink. “Have fun, and enjoy your honeymoon.”
My face burning as hot as Owen’s fever had been, I fled the store as soon as I had my shopping bags in hand. I stopped by Ethan’s car on the way back to the room, and just as I’d expected, there was a Manhattan map and a Boy Scout compass in the glove compartment. Heck, from what I knew of Ethan, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find most of the rest of the shopping list in his trunk, because he never knew when he might need gold body glitter and a bunch of herbs.
“Wow, that was fast,” Ethan said when I got back to the room.
“I found everything I needed at the motel shop. And before I bring out any of this, I want to make it clear that I don’t want to hear
anything
about the nature of the items. I had to get creative, and let’s just say the shop goes right along with the theme of this room and leave it at that.” I gathered from the alarmed expressions on all their faces that I’d made my point.
I emptied my shopping bags onto the room’s table and let Owen inspect what I found. “The herbs are all mixed up, but I’m sure we could separate them, if we have to,” I said when I got nervous about the fact that he was taking so long to look at my purchases and hadn’t said anything yet.
“We’ll have to pull the cloves and anise out of this stuff, but all the rest is fine,” he said. He raised an eyebrow at the body glitter and the label on the Lovers’ Bath Herbs, but otherwise kept his mouth shut. I thought I caught Ethan smirking out of the corner of my eye, but he schooled his expression into neutrality before I could turn and look. I could tell that Merlin was dying of curiosity about the uses for these items, but he also said nothing.
Owen put me to work sorting the cloves and anise out into the ashtrays while he and Merlin set up the spell. They pulled the bedspread off the bed and covered the bed with a dropcloth Ethan had in the trunk of his car. Then they spread the map out on the middle of the bed and placed a candle at each corner. Once I was done sorting spices, Owen put a pinch of the herbs into each ashtray, along with the spices, and arranged those around the map. He then sprinkled a fine line of salt on the floor around the edge of the bed. He had the compass in his hand, but I didn’t see that he was doing anything with the aspirin or the air freshener, so I wondered what role they would play.
“We may want to disable the smoke detector,” Owen said as he settled cross-legged on the bed in front of the map. Ethan took a chair and climbed up to remove the batteries. Merlin sat across from Owen on the bed.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked.
Instead of answering me, Owen turned to Ethan. “Do you have a fire extinguisher?”
“Of course.”
He ran outside to get it, and Owen turned back to me. “Be ready in case this gets out of control. You two can jump in without being hurt. Put out any flames and scatter the herbs. But otherwise, don’t cross the salt circle.”
Ethan came back with the fire extinguisher. “I think the manager’s been watching me get stuff out of my car. She’s got to be wondering what kind of honeymoon I’m having,” he said dryly.
I shrugged. “Maybe I’ve got firefighter fantasies.” More seriously, I asked Owen, “Are things likely to go wrong? This sounds dangerous.”
“It can be,” Merlin answered. “In doing this, we’re searching for the negative magical energies at work, and that can leave the door open for them to find us.”
“Ah,” I said, unconsciously taking a step away from the bed.
“You should also watch carefully and pay attention to whatever you see. Our focus may be elsewhere.”
“Now, lights out, please,” Owen said, and Ethan hit the light switch, plunging the room into near darkness, the only light coming from around the edges of the heavy curtains.
I realized I was holding my breath while I waited for them to begin, but the room was so silent that breathing might have been disruptive. Merlin started the chanting, and in that moment I fully realized exactly who he was. I knew, intellectually, and I’d even seen him do some awesome things. But as he said words that sounded incredibly ancient, that were probably even in his native language, I got the full force of the fact that this was the greatest wizard who’d ever lived and a man who was more linked to some nearly forgotten time than he was to today.
Then Owen joined him, and the sight of him being serious and actually working at the magic made my pulse race. He was usually so casual about magic. It was something he did with a muttered word and a careless flip of his wrist. If he was focusing this intently, this had to be big stuff.
While they chanted, the candles spontaneously lit, one after another. Soon, the room took on a sweet, spicy smell as the herbs smoldered. The candlelight reflecting off Owen’s glasses kept me from seeing his eyes, making him look darker and more mysterious. I might occasionally have joked about my boyfriend the wizard, but I got the full sense of what that meant as I felt the power in the room swell. I took another involuntary step away from the bed.