That Touch of Magic (22 page)

I nudged Leo. “She’s like those Whack-A-Moles. Just when you think she’s gone,
poof!
She’s back.”

Leo shot me a look, then returned his focus to my mother. “Yes, I was following my heart,” he said with more kindness and patience than she deserved. “But let’s talk about you. How are you, Lillith?”

The Widow’s face lit up. “You know, thank you so much for asking. I’m doing
amazing,
I have to tell you.” She reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing it in her cold, bony fingers. “My beautiful daughter has changed my life, and now I’ve seen God’s plan for me, and everything suddenly makes sense.”

“Yeah, about that.” I pulled my hand out of her grasp, losing my patience for the game. I waved my hand in front of her face, and she switched her weird, smiley focus from Leo to me. “It’s not God’s plan, Widow. You’re being magically influenced by something weird and decidedly unholy. You need to send these people home and draw as little attention to yourself as possible until we get this figured out. Okay?”

The Widow blinked at me as though I’d just started speaking Russian. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“All this? It isn’t God, Widow. It’s your narcissism and their delusion, all feeding each other into huge monsters that, left unchecked, will most definitely crush Tokyo. Once I figure this out and get rid of the magic, it’s going to be hard to come back from this, so—”

“Get rid of it?” Her smile faded and her expression hardened and for the first time since we’d arrived, she looked like my mother again. “You will
not
get rid of it. What God has done, no man can undo.”

“Oh, for—” I nudged Leo. “Tell her it’s not God, Leo.” I looked at the Widow. “He used to be a priest. He knows these things.”

“Almost-priest,” Leo corrected.

“Fine, whatever. An
almost
-priest. Tell her, Leo.”

Leo was quiet for a moment, then said, “I can’t do that.”

I blinked in shock and stared at him. “What?”

“I don’t know God’s will. No one does. That’s why He’s God.”

“Oh, dear sweet Leo.” My mother reached across the table and patted his cheek. “Such a good boy.” She pulled one of the tins from the big pile on the kitchen table, opened it, and shoved it at him. “Have a cookie.”

I clenched my teeth and spoke through them to Leo. “You’re not helping.”

“I’m not going to lie,” he said, his voice low.

An uneasiness settled in the pit of my stomach. “I thought you didn’t believe in God anymore.”

“I never said that.”

“You said you lost your faith.”

“In me,” he said. “In whether I really belonged in the church. Maybe even in the church itself, a bit. Not in God.”

I felt a mix of disappointment and anger, although I couldn’t quite figure out why. “Oh.”

He held my eyes for a moment, and I could sense a disappointment of his own in there, and then he turned to my mother.

“Lillith.” His voice was soft and kind as he reached his hand out to my mother, who beamed and placed her hand in his. “I think the question of whether or not this is God’s will is not what’s at issue here. If it is God’s will, it will be, no matter what. You don’t need to have adoration and vigils and sermons to fulfill God’s plan for you.”

She pulled her hand out of his, and the beam in her face dimmed significantly. “I should have known you’d be on
her
side.”

“I’m on your side,” Leo said. “I’m not sure all of this is good for you.”

Her little beady eyes went dead and cold, glittering like black glass. “
Good
for me? It’s
amazing
for me. My entire life, I knew I was special. I knew I had a purpose. A
destiny
. But over and over again, I was disappointed. An unworthy husband, a tramp for a daughter. Now a Babylonian Whore of a daughter-in-law, here to ruin the only pure thing in my life, my good boy. And right at the moment when everything seemed darkest, when I began to question how I could be this special and yet so unappreciated—”

“Here we go,” I muttered.

My mother ignored me. “—at that very moment, I got my answer. And every day, that answer is clearer and clearer.” She slammed the flat of her hand down on the table. “Look! I’ll show you!”

With that, she pushed up and headed out at a clip. By the time we got to the front door, she was already on the lawn, and Tinsey the Insane Adorer was on her knees on the porch, her hands out to receive my mother’s knuckles for a kiss, but the Widow swooshed past her without a thought, and Tinsey just lowered her head and made the sign of the cross.

The Widow trudged to the middle of the lawn and held out her arms, then gave a meaningful glance back at Tinsey, who gasped and whipped her cell phone out. She didn’t talk into the phone, just hit a few buttons, and within a few moments, doors up and down the street began to open, and people were coming up the street.

Leo moved a little closer to me where we stood at the base of the porch stairs. “What is she doing?” he whispered.

“I have no idea,” I said. “It’s still daytime. She doesn’t have any power now. Maybe she just wants to show us how many people she can call in on a moment’s notice?”

Leo shrugged. People began to gather, all silent, watching, their faces rapt. I moved closer to Leo, and he took my hand. My mother held her arms out even farther, and lifted her face to the sky.

“Father, creator of all that is good in this world, I ask you to act through me, to show the unbelievers and the cynics what your power can do. In your name, I humbly give myself to thee.”

“Amen,” someone said from behind me as the crowd gathered closer to her, circling her on the lawn.

At first, I thought it was just a ray of sun coming through the clouds—which, granted, would have been freaky enough. But as the crowd gasped and I stepped closer to get a better look, I saw that it wasn’t the sun.

It was the Widow.

“I thought her power was night power,” Leo said.

“It was.”

“I thought you said people with night power couldn’t use their power during the day.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.”

“Okay.”

I moved closer and wedged my way through the crowd until I got to my mother’s side. Light emanated from her, a multihued halo that shimmered around her entire body. The green ropes of smoky light that had come from her hands the first few times were now electric-charged, like day magic, and they ran all over her body, only just visible under the glow of the other rainbow colors undulating around her body.

It took me a moment to see past the light to the extreme strain on her face. Veins were popping out on her forehead, and a trickle of sweat slid down her cheek.

This wasn’t an act.

“Mom!” I rushed to her, catching her just as she fell. The light went out in a few flickers, and her chest heaved with shallow breath. She was cold to the touch, which wasn’t unusual for someone with no body fat, but still. It was easily eighty degrees outside; even a snake got warm in the heat.

“Back off!” I yelled over the mumbling prayers as people huddled in to touch her. “Tinsey, call nine-one-one! Someone get her a blanket!”

I laid her down on the lawn, rubbing my hands up and down her arms as her body started to shake.

“Hang in there, Widow,” I said. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Of course I am,” she croaked, her voice weak. “I haven’t made my sacrifice yet.” And then she shut her eyes and passed out.

The crowd dispersed, and I glanced back to see Leo coming with the old quilt from the back of the couch. He wrapped her up in it and lifted her easily, like a child, carrying her up the steps and inside, where we could close the door against the insanity behind us. I tried to follow him, but I had to fight my way through the throng of people trying to touch my mother’s limp, unconscious body.

“Back the fuck off!” I hollered, and they split like the Red Sea, glaring at me as I passed through them. I glared back and slammed the door shut behind us.

*   *   *

When she wouldn’t wake up, the EMTs sent her to the hospital in Buffalo, where she was immediately admitted. Leo was at my side pretty much the whole time, but somehow managed to get in a call to Liv and Tobias, who were there by noon. Liv got ahold of Peach, and told me that Peach and Nick were going to be on the next plane stateside, but that was going to take at least a day.

Meanwhile, the Widow slept. Tests were run on her blood, on her brain. An unreasonably tall doctor told me that they weren’t sure what had caused all of this, but they’d work hard to figure it out. Deliveries of flowers started pouring in almost the minute we got her admitted, and strange people began holding vigil outside her room. I processed everything from a place far away from the rumble and activity. I talked to doctors and nurses, I signed papers, I functioned, but I and my thoughts were elsewhere.

With Desmond, mostly. He’d done this, to
my
people. Me, my checkout girl, my English teacher, my mother. The rules of what he was doing didn’t work the way that natural magic worked; this was a whole new ball game. It may have started out as day and night magic, but apparently, whatever this was, it was evolving past that. Was that Desmond’s intention? Or was it the consequence of messing with free will? Maybe he was skating by on a free-will loophole; after all, we had all taken the potions willingly, even if we didn’t realize the full effect of what we were taking.

And hell, some of those consequences would be mine, wouldn’t they? Or was I going to skate by on my own loophole, since I didn’t know that my purple vials had been contaminated at the time I made the potions?

Whatever was going on, it was time to get all cards on the table. He wanted something, and it was past time I knew what that was.

“Knock knock.”

I glanced up from the cold, untouched vending machine coffee in my hands to see Liv standing in the open doorway of my mother’s room. The bed was empty; my mother was out getting an MRI so they could look inside her brain.

“Hey,” I said.

She sat in the visitor’s chair next to mine. “It’s past one. You need to eat. Leo and Tobias went down to the cafeteria for food.”

“Not hungry.” I went to the bathroom, dumped the coffee into the sink, and tossed the cup in the garbage. “Actually, I need to head out for a bit. Can you keep an eye on things here?”

Liv blinked in surprise. “They’ll be bringing your mom back soon…”

“Maybe, but they’re going to have no idea what’s wrong. Desmond is the only one who knows what’s going on. I need to go see him.”

I started toward the door, but Liv got up and stood in my way.

“Desmond did all this? You’re sure?”

I nodded. “Pretty sure. He gave a potion to Clementine Klosterman, and now she’s Speedy Gonzales with pink light around her hands.”

Liv’s brows knit. “Who’s Clementine Klosterman?”

“She used to work at Treacher’s IGA. I sent her to Betty to get a job at CCB’s, where you and Tobias can keep an eye on her. And, oh yeah, would you and Tobias mind keeping an eye on Clementine Klosterman for me?” I gave a weak smile. “I know. I’m sorry. I should have called you. It’s just that a lot has been happening.”

Liv nodded. “Yeah, it has. Okay, so, what’s your plan? You’re just going to, what … go ask Desmond what he’s up to? What if he’s dangerous? What if he does something to you?”

“He’s already done it,” I said. “What’s he going to do? Make me
more
of a firestarter?”

She sighed. “Fine. I’ll go with you.”

“No.”

“Then wait until after dark, when your power is in. You can set him on fire.”

I shook my head. “I can’t control it.”
Not yet, not without Leo,
I thought, but I couldn’t think about that now.

“Then wait and take Tobias. He can stop Desmond…”

Our eyes met, and Liv’s flickered away. Tobias’s power, the ability to stop any movement—a pumping heart, for example—was rare and incredibly dangerous. It had gotten him taken away from his family at the age of thirteen after he accidentally killed a school bully, and he hadn’t used it since. Most of the time, we didn’t even talk about it. We pretended he was just another magical, like Liv or Betty, making ceramics into squirrels or creating blueberry muffins out of thin air, but he wasn’t. And there were people watching who knew it.

Which made what I was about to ask for even harder.

“Hey, I’ve got a favor to ask, but—”

“Done. What?”

“Wait until I’ve asked,” I said, meeting her eyes. “It’s a big one.”

She crossed her arms and gave me an expectant raise of her eyebrow. “What is it?”

I pulled a folded piece of paper out of my pocket and handed it to her. “This is everything I know about Desmond, which isn’t much. His last name, his address in Niagara Falls. I did some basic GoogleFu, but nothing came up, which makes me think that maybe he changed his name or something.… I don’t know. But there’s something there, something in his past, and I think if I know what it is, it might help.”

Liv’s brow creased as she glanced over the sparse notes I’d hastily scribbled on the back of a Wegmans receipt. She looked up at me, worry in her eyes. “Christ, Stace. You’re usually the one I go to when I can’t find something on the Internet. I don’t know what I can do that—”

“Actually, I was…” I hesitated, barely able to get the words out. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything through public channels. I know Tobias had some contacts in the magical agencies.”

I couldn’t look at her. I knew what I was asking. Tobias was floating nicely under the radar of the magical agency that had taken him away from his family when he was just a kid. Asking him to get in touch was risking them taking notice of him again, and if they did that … who the hell knew? Magicals like Tobias disappeared into thin air all the time, and no one ever saw them again.

“You can say no,” I said, “but he’s causing some real damage here, and I have to ask.”

She raised her head to look at me, determination in her eyes. “Done.”

Part of me wished she’d said no. “Liv…”

“Stop it.” She tucked the paper into her pocket. “He’ll be careful.”