The Wizard of Seattle (6 page)

He was a compelling man physically, attractive to women of all ages. The young ones found his face exciting, and the older ones imagined tragedy in his black eyes and thought he needed taking care of.

Serena knew better.

“I wouldn’t create a flood,” she assured him. “Maybe a little waterfall, but not a flood.”

Merlin gave her a look and opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say a word, the bulb in the lamp nearest Serena exploded with a pop. Only the shade kept her from being pelted with shards of glass.

“Serena, turn it
off.”

“I know, I know.” She closed her eyes and concentrated on corralling her wayward energies, drawing them in, tamping them down, erecting a kind of barrier inside herself to hold them in. It was something that tended to happen after a lesson, this “spillover” of her energies, particularly when her concentration was erratic.

Merlin had repeatedly tried to teach her that there was indeed a “switch,” that she would someday be able to “turn off” her energies—something he had perfected long ago—but it was one skill Serena had failed to master.

She had, however, learned to restrain and cloak her energies well enough that she usually didn’t explode light bulbs or cause other electrical problems merely by walking past.

Merlin, alert in case she needed his instruction, waited until she relaxed and opened her eyes, signaling her success. He went to get a replacement bulb from a well-stocked closet. Serena watched him dispense with the broken pieces of the exploded bulb with a flick of his finger, then screw the replacement into the socket.

She couldn’t help smiling, reflecting silently that wizards were strange creatures, an odd mixture of ancient and modern. At least he was, and she seemed to be, as well. They used their powers in a peculiar patchwork of ways, often for the sake of convenience and yet in no recognizable pattern.

Serena herself had made up her bed with a sweep of her hand this morning, not because she was lazy or in the habit of doing it, but because she’d overslept and was in a hurry.

Physical gestures were not necessary to spell-casting, Serena had been surprised—and a bit disappointed—to
learn; but the motions of the hands
did
tend to help focus concentration and were generally used, unless the wizard was in public or had some other reason for wishing to be inconspicuous. In any case Serena liked the ancient gestures.

They made her feel like a wizard.

As the new light bulb glowed to life, Merlin said almost absently, “Your powers are growing.”

She knew they were; she could feel it.

“Which makes it all the more vital that you learn to find the switch, Serena,” he continued, facing her again with a slight frown. “This spillover of energies—”

“I know, it’s a waste and a danger,” she recited.

Merlin’s frown deepened, but he shook his head a little in the traditional reluctant acceptance of teachers everywhere when they recognize a lack of attention in their pupils. He glanced at his watch—unlike Serena, he could wear one, and did, even though one of his many talents was a constant and perfect awareness of time.

“It’s almost noon; you wanted to break?”

“Yes.” Serena got up, shrugged out of her robe, and hung it near his. “Lunch. Rachel left a casserole for us, and I put it in the oven before we started this morning.”

Merlin tended to forget about unimportant things like eating when his mind was occupied with his work, but between them, Serena and their housekeeper kept most meals on a fairly regular schedule. Rachel came in daily except weekends, and kept the freezer well stocked with quick and easy-to-prepare meals for the days Richard and Serena were on their own.

It was up to Serena to make sure they observed regular meal times on weekends, and since she was almost always hungry, she rarely needed reminders herself. One delightful bonus of being a wizard, she had realized long ago, was an unusually high metabolic rate; expending as much energy as they did, both she and Merlin could eat anything they pleased, and tended to require more calories than normal people just to maintain their weights.

“Are you going out tonight?” she asked him as they descended the stairs.

“Yes. Dinner and a concert with Lenore Todd. How about you?” His tone was casual.

“No. I’m going to stay blamelessly at home tonight and study that manual of incantations you added to my reading list,” she replied lightly.

“Study but don’t practice,” he reminded her more or less automatically.

Serena didn’t say I
know
again, contenting herself with a nod. She was tired of saying it. She had been warned so often about not practicing new skills without Merlin’s being present that it was beginning to annoy her. He just couldn’t stop treating her like a child, she thought.

It didn’t help that she had felt a stab of jealousy about his date, even though she
knew
that he dated for the same reason she did—to maintain a normal appearance for friends, neighbors, and the rest of the society in which they lived. The importance of that appearance, made up of normal jobs and regular social activities and all the other trappings of an ordinary life-style, was something Merlin had explained to Serena when she had first come to study with him and they had created the fiction of blood relation and guardianship.

Serena had long ago come to the conclusion that her Master wizard was too obsessed with his art to be concerned with lesser pursuits. Besides, since so much of his energy was focused and quite literally expended on perfecting that art, there was undoubtedly little left over for women and sex.

That was what she had told herself at sixteen, and his habits over the years seemed to bear out that deduction. If he had affairs, there was certainly no sign of them, and since he tended to date women who were in Seattle only temporarily—for business or pleasure—gossip could only speculate on his prowess as a lover.

Serena refused to speculate. As an adoring teenager, she had convinced herself that he was a monk with his mind on a much higher plane, and nothing had happened to destroy that creation.

So there was no reason for her to feel jealous about Lenore Todd. The woman would be in Seattle only a week or so for an environmental seminar, according to what Merlin had told Serena when he’d met her a few days ago. He always told Serena about the women he dated, because she always asked, and there was always an indifferent note in his voice when he answered.

Serena listened for that indifference. And heard it this time. But the increasing tension and frustration she felt made it difficult for her to be reassured.

Though her turbulent emotions had made the previous night a rather miserable one, she had managed to sleep, and today she had managed—more or less—to assume her usual relaxed attitude toward Merlin. It was getting harder, though, for her to act as if nothing had changed, as if she were still that obsessed child who had crossed a country to find him, wanting nothing in life except to be a wizard.

Because something
had
changed. In Serena. Her determination to become a Master wizard had not lessened, but she had grown up these last years, and she had come to the realization that there was much more to life. To her life, anyway. She was a wizard, yes, but she was also a woman, even if Merlin couldn’t see that was true.

And it was getting very difficult for her to fight the resentment she felt every time he treated her like a child.

It was nearly noon on Saturday when Jeremy Kane fell off his couch. He struggled up, using the cluttered coffee table to lever himself back onto the cushions, and sat there for several minutes with his head in his hands. It was a familiar pose, his dizziness a familiar sensation, and he waited grimly for his head to stop spinning.

When it eventually did, he got up slowly and made his way into the narrow alley kitchen of his apartment. Mixing tomato juice and a few other ingredients, he made his usual pick-me-up and drank it down, then fixed another and carried the glass back into his cramped and messy living room.

He sat down on the couch again and pulled his loosened tie off, fumbled for the remote, and turned the television on. He switched to CNN out of habit, just in case anything interesting had happened in the world while he had been passed out. It took him three tries to wrestle his jacket off, and the sound of paper caught his attention even as he wondered at the unusual brevity of his hangover.

The dizziness had faded almost instantly, the nausea he usually felt was totally absent, and his mouth didn’t feel or taste like the bottom of a bird cage. Even though his pick-me-up was good, it wasn’t
that
good.

“What the hell?” he muttered, bothered, as always, by anything out of the ordinary. Even his voice sounded better than it had any right to, only a little raspy. Then he pulled the neatly folded paper from the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket, unfolded it, and stared at it.

It was his rough draft of the announcement awarding the newspaper’s grant. When he had gone to the party last night, he had left the draft in his old manual typewriter, he was sure. Looking across the room to his small desk, he could clearly see the top of the typewriter even over the usual clutter of newspapers, magazines, an empty pizza box, two cracked mugs half filled with cold coffee and cigarette butts, and the remains of a two-day-old microwavable dinner.

There was no paper in the machine.

Kane might have been a drunk, and he might have lost or squandered most of the raw talent that had made him a nationally recognized name at the tender age of twenty-five nearly two decades before, but he was not a stupid man, and he did not doubt either the evidence of his eyes or his memory—neither of which had ever foiled him. And he had never drawn a blank after a night of drinking, even on those frequent occasions when any merciful God would have spared him the memories.

So he remembered the previous evening, and the only unusual thing he could call to mind was that Serena Smyth had asked him to dance. She had never done that before, even though they had been introduced
years ago, and though he saw her at many of the high-ticket social and charity events in Seattle.

She had asked him to dance. And while they danced, she had sweetly encouraged him to talk about himself and what he’d been doing lately—a sneaky tactic if he’d ever seen one. She had even casually asked the address of his apartment, he recalled, which had made him grow an inch or two and had filled his head with something besides brains.

And then … And then he had a vague memory of leaning heavily on her as he staggered back to his chair, and falling into the sweet blackness of unconsciousness.

Had Serena brought him home? Why on earth would she? Just to get her hands on this announcement? There didn’t seem to be any other reason. She certainly hadn’t stripped him, had her way with him, and then put his clothes back on before leaving. He would have remembered that even if he’d been nearly dead.

No; it had to be the announcement. But why? She was friendly with Seth Westcott and his girlfriend, Kane knew that well enough, but it didn’t seem likely she’d go to so much trouble just to find out what would be announced in a few days. And if she
had
brought him home to get an early peek at the announcement, then what would possess her to remove the draft from his typewriter and leave it in his jacket pocket—where he could hardly fail to find it?

Jeremy Kane didn’t like puzzles, and though his instincts might have dulled over the years, he could still recognize something that didn’t make sense. He also had so little going on in his life that even a minor mystery was a welcome thing—though that was something he didn’t like to think about. So he decided it wouldn’t hurt to find out more than he already knew about Miss Serena Smyth.

He placed a call to a private investigator in Seattle who owed him a few favors, and was lucky enough to catch the man in his office on a Saturday afternoon.

“Taylor, I need a favor,” he announced without preamble.

Brad Taylor groaned. “I’m not gonna dig up any
more dirt on politicians for you, Kane,” he said quickly. “I’m sick of wading through the muck.”

“This is no politician, believe me. She’s sort of a society deb, near as I can figure. If you find even a few little bones in her closet, I’d be surprised. And don’t forget how much you owe me, Taylor.”

“Okay, okay. What do you need?”

“Everything you can find out about this woman. Her name is Serena Smyth.” He spelled it briskly, then added, on impulse. “And whatever you can find out about this guy she lives with, supposedly her uncle …”

Following an afternoon’s work, Serena took advantage of Merlin’s absence on Saturday evening to relax her guard somewhat, which was a relief. Since she never minded being alone, the quiet of the big house didn’t bother her, and she was perfectly happy fixing herself a light dinner, taking a long bath, and then curling up on her bed with the television turned low and a big, very old leather-bound volume of incantations open before her.

She was tempted to practice a few of the more interesting spells, but contented herself with memorizing those she especially wanted to remember. After all, you never knew when you had to tame the wildest animal or turn an enemy into a toad.

The book was so fascinating that Serena passed a pleasant evening, and since she was tired by the long day of honing her abilities, she went to bed before midnight—and long before Merlin came home.

The next day was virtually a repeat of Saturday, with lessons in the attic workroom in the morning, a break for lunch, and then more lessons in the afternoon. Nothing out of the ordinary happened until they were eating supper early that evening, at the kitchen table rather than in the more formal dining room, since it was just the two of them.

Serena brought up the subject, having come across at least three incantations regarding the control of weaker minds in her studies the previous night.

“I thought you told me that mind control was beyond our capabilities, that we could only do fairly simple things—boost willpower or self-confidence or induce sleep, but never truly control the mind of someone else.”