The Flower Bowl Spell (32 page)

Cooper’s recovery is clipping along, the
wonders of modern medicine dovetailing with the old-school folk
remedies Tess heaped upon him—barley tea and whiskey, mostly.
Tylenol is his new favorite candy.

He wants to have a talk with yours truly
about what went down. Now that the excitement is over, I’m not so
sure I want to break up with him, and I haven’t been brave enough
to delve into his ideas on the subject and find out if he wants to
break up with me. I’m considering putting a Forget About It Spell
on him and sweeping the whole thing under the metaphorical rug with
my metaphorical broomstick. Sure, I’m down with my witchosity, but
who says openness and honesty are always a good thing for the old
psyche? I’m still not sure.

Still, messing with his memories is probably
not my best option, morality-wise.

Jesus Christ arrived late last night and
slept on our couch. We called him after Cleo told me I didn’t need
her anymore—at least for now—and that it was time to go home.
They’ll be flying back tonight. I miss them already. I wonder if
she regrets sending her mother away. No one seems to know how much
time it’ll take until Viveka comes back. I can’t dismiss the idea
of her never coming home. Since the night we foiled Isaac, I’ve
been able to get a better sense of Viveka, and I know she’s
considering giving up her life with her girls and her husband. And
I hate that. There are already too many motherless daughters out
there, too many neglected little girls.

I feel a nudge on my shoulder and look up
into Tyson’s smiling face.

“Sorry I’m late.” He checks the time on his
cell phone. “Two minutes to be precise.”

“Shame on you.” I put the necklace in my
sweater pocket and stand to hug him, a long one with lots of
squeezing of shoulders and rubbing of backs. It feels friendly, I
tell myself. Nothing more. We sit down in a relatively quiet, sunny
corner of a horseshoe-shaped minipark just off the sidewalk. I note
Tyson’s sunglasses are new and transparent, a lovely shade of
amber. There are about half a dozen groups of people around us with
baby strollers or dogs, couples sharing lattes and scones, dads and
moms chasing blissfully oblivious toddlers. Tyson hands me a to-go
cup and a paper bag with a piece of coffee cake in it
and—presto—we’re just like the other folks around us, blending in
on a weekend morn.

Tyson drops today’s copy of the
Golden
Gate Planet
in my lap. “Nice scoop on the Ana & Co.
sweatshops thing, by the way.”

My article is front page, above the fold.
Auntie Tess got me an interview with Gil, her boss. It was all very
public relations. “Thanks. Investigative journalism is not really
my thing.”

“No matter. It’s good.”

“So,” I say, after a sip of my ginger tea
latte. “Your engagement is off.”

He nods. “Yup. My sham of a love affair is
over.”

“I saw the news online. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t…meant to be.”

Understatement. I respect that. “How is
Cheradon?”

He shrugs. “She’s at her Anderson Valley
place. Recuperating. She’s seeing a shrink. I think, aside from
being embarrassed, she’s cool. And she should be. Cool, I mean. No
one knows about any of that occult crap or her connection to
Isaac.”

“You mean, no one in the music biz
knows.”

“Right.”

Poor Cheradon. And I thought my dad was
wanting.

We’re quiet for a while. Cheradon and I had a
brief conversation while I drove her, Tyson, and his bandmates to
the W Hotel after leaving Golden Gate Park that night, after Auntie
Tess poulticed me up. She told me she had been under the thrall of
her father since he made contact with her a few years ago. Isaac
convinced her to leave home a few months’ shy of her high school
graduation, then put her in some sort of brainwashing lockdown
where she was humiliated and possibly sexual assaulted (she was
vague on the details, and I didn’t feel ghoulish enough to try
reading her). She emerged from the experience a devout follower of
her own dad, doing whatever he wanted her to do. But when she
started to gain fame and power of her own, he decided he needed to
control her better and gave her the nose ring, which included the
glamour. She told me it was indeed Isaac in the Muni station who
tried to grab me last summer, and Auntie Tess guessed that his
putting my life in danger broke my magick banishment spell, which
meant Xien, my counselor fairy, was able to appear to me and assist
me.

After the Muni day, Isaac regrouped, Cheradon
said. He really wanted me for the Flower Bowl Spell. He did some
research on my background, found my connection to Alice and Tyson,
and arranged for Cheradon to fall in love with her fellow rock
star. Isaac’s continued interest in me prompted Cleo, in a way we
still can’t figure out and she still can’t explain, to come to my
aid. Her protective presence was even more powerful than a fairy’s.
In fact, it seemed nearly invincible. She might be the most
formidable witch I know.

“I have something for you,” Tyson says. He
takes my hand and puts something in it, curling my fingers around
the object. I uncurl them. It’s Alice’s amulet. The one I made for
her.

“I found it in her room at my parents’
house,” he says. “It was hanging on this little board she used to
use for her special jewelry. It’s been there since she left for
Africa.”

I process this. After a long time I look up
at him. “You mean…?”

He nods. “She never took it with her.”

“She didn’t have it when she…when she went
to…”

He shakes his head. We’re quiet for a while
as he gives me time. Maybe my magick would have protected her.
Maybe Alice would have lived. My thoughts turn pink, but I can’t
tell if it’s from love or the beginnings of rage.

“Well,” Tyson says. “Are you going to tell me
what the hell was going on? And I don’t mean just to me, but…” He
waves his hand in the air. “You know, everything.”

I pick some of the delicious crumbled topping
off my coffee cake and crunch it between my teeth. “I’ll try. It’s
only what I’ve pieced together after conferring with Auntie Tess
and Tucker. They’re privy to the word on the magickal street.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah. So. Cheradon’s manager—D.B.—and Isaac
were trying to put together a spell that would make them
super-duper powerful witches. They were already pretty powerful,
but you know how power breeds greed and all that. They were using
Cheradon to get to you to get to me because they—” I interrupt
myself with a laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. “Because they
wanted to kill me and use my uterus and feet as a key ingredients
for their spell. Yuck.”

“But why you?”

I can’t say her name. Not yet. “Because
someone
told them I’m all organic and free-range.”

He looks at me as if he’s not sure whether
I’m serious or not.

“Kidding. Because…I'm a good witch.”

He takes this in.

“Anyway,” I continue, “I was getting a lot of
warnings from the universe at large that there was some bad mojo
going down. I started seeing things.” I remember the
clothes-wearing ducks that crushed that egg in San Luis Obispo.
Their warning makes a lot of sense in hindsight. Of course, in
hindsight it would.

“I seem to remember you telling me that you
could do that, and me freaking out like a pants-pisser,” Tyson
says, bringing me back. He blushes a little.

“I chalked it up to you being under a
hex.”

“I wish I could use that excuse with all the
girls.”

“You know, if you really want to, you can.” I
bump his shoulder with mine. We sit for a while, and I have an
inkling of his thoughts—his aura is a blooming fuchsia sparkled
through with gold. A crush that will most likely fade with time and
separation. I recall, once again, my horny little dream about us,
and the kisses we’ve actually shared. Maybe I’m a little fuchsia
too. I clear my throat. “What I can’t figure out,” I say, “is Gru.”
There. I’ve said her name.

“Cheradon’s grandmother.”

“And my high priestess. She’s always been one
of the good ones.” At least, so I’ve thought. I pull the necklace
out of my pocket. “I’ve been wanting to ask you…that day at
Gladys’s, why did you take this?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t remember. I
don’t remember much of what they told me to do.” He snaps his
fingers. “Gladys was Isaac’s girlfriend, right? Maybe that’s why.”
He reaches for the locket, and I hesitate only a second before
giving it to him. He turns it in his hands, opens the locket door,
shuts it, and opens it again. “What’s this?”

“What?” I bend my head closer, trying to see
what he sees.

He puts his finger near the edge of the
locket. “That.”

There’s a small indentation I haven’t noticed
before, kind of like a reset button or the hole in a computer’s
disk drive when you can’t get the disk out and you have to stick an
unbent paperclip in it.

I look in my bag and find a brooch—a pink
poodle I thought I had lost. I poke the pin into the opening, and
an image appears where a photo should go.

It’s Gru. She’s moving—she brushes some of
her long gray hair away from her face.

“I wonder if you’ll ever see this, Memphis,”
she says. “I put a Dreamweaver Charm on Cooper suggesting he buy it
for you, and Bright Vixen will make sure you get it, but we can’t
let them know I sent it to you. If they find out…” Her eyes dart
away, then back.

“By the way, this is a prototype. The one I
gave Viveka is just an ordinary locket, but yours has a microchip
in it. It’s Bright Vixen’s invention. Isn’t it clever? I don’t
understand it, but she’s going to sell them for lots of money, and
call them Memory Lockets. We’re going to use the money to get the
coven going again.” She smiles for a moment, then turns serious
again.

“Darling, you are in danger. I did something
very foolish. You see, my son Isaac, he wants to come back to me.
He wants to be a part of my family again, but only if he can start
his own coven, one that oversees all the others—a kind of head
council. The thing is, he’s gotten into some trouble, which I won’t
go into now, but it’s very bad.” She pauses.

“Memphis. He’s after you, I’m afraid. And
part of me wants him to find you but the other part regrets I ever
mentioned you. He’s determined. He won’t stop. So you’ve got to be
careful, my girl. Be careful. And be strong. I know you can look
out for yourself. But, Memphis…he’s my son. Since Sadie…since
she…drowned”—she almost chokes on the word—“he’s all I have left.
Someday, when you’re a mother you’ll understand.” The recording
cuts off.

When it becomes clear that there’s nothing
more, I yank out the brooch and snap shut the locket. That day in
the hotel, when I saw the hazy figure in it, I must have tripped
the starter, but not fully. My head feels suddenly heavy with anger
and sadness. I toss the locket into my bag.

“You’ll understand?” Tyson says. “How will
you understand if you’re dead?”

“I can’t believe she played the
when-you’re-a-mother card. I really hate that. I might not be one,
but I have one, and I don’t think she’d have anyone killed for
me.”

“Mine would.”

I look at him. After Alice died, I spent a
lot of time avoiding thinking about their parents and what they
were going through. But I know enough to admit Tyson’s right—Mrs.
Belmonte would give a life—her own, someone else’s—for all of her
children’s.

“Too bad Gru’s son is a major asshole,” Tyson
says.

“I’ll drink to that.” I take a sip of
tea.

Something specific is bothering me about
Gru’s little confession. It raises so many more questions. I feel
for her. Of course. She’s lost her son, who disappeared years ago
and now sits in jail charged with murder. And then there’s her
daughter, who died horribly, drowning—

That flickering connection I felt back in
Tucker’s study finally clicks into place. “Drowning.”

“What’s that?” Tyson puts down his cup of
coffee.

“Sadie LeBrun Murray drowned. So did Gladys.”
I’m getting that shiver up my spine again. “I have to wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

I don’t even want to say it out loud—the idea
that Isaac murdered his own sister. I don’t have any proof, and I
don’t have a motive, except from the playbooks of William
Shakespeare and Masterpiece Melodrama Theatre. But Isaac had a hand
in my almost-demise, in the kidnapping of Cooper, and the
mistreatment of innocent rock musicians—and of his own daughter. He
certainly killed Gladys. So it’s not too far-fetched to surmise
that he’d kill his twin.

For now, I’ll leave it alone. There will be
time to decide just how much I want to get involved with the whole
justice system thing.

“I just wonder where Gru could be,” I say.
Tess took a posse of her fellow single-practitioner witches up to
Gru’s Mendocino compound, but it was deserted. Not even any
evidence of protection spells around the house or grounds.

Tyson pats my knee. “I have an idea.” He
takes out his cell phone and makes a call. “Hi. It’s me. I know,
but I thought of something. Do you know where your grandmother
is?”

Cheradon.

“Yeah? You sure about that? Well, sure.” He
glances at me. “Yes, I am. No. No, we’re not.” Long pause and the
sounds of animated talking on her end. I resist the urge to
magickally eavesdrop. “You’re definitely sure? If you say so.” He
listens for a while more before saying goodbye and putting the
phone in his pocket.

“I suppose,” he says, “since you’re a good
witch and all, you already know what she told me.”

I shake my head. “Oh, the things I don’t
do.”

“Really?” He mulls this over. “She said Gru
is not to be found.”

I don’t ask about the
rest
of their
conversation. “It was worth a shot.”

We sit for a while without talking.