Magick & Mayhem Page 10

  I looked across the table at Tilly, hoping for some guidance, but she shrugged her shoulders. I was on my own. “It’s far,” I said, wary of causing a real heart attack. “Very far.”

  “You appear to be a smart young woman,” Merlin said, “yet your answer is of no use to me. How many days travel is it? I imagine the journey is somewhat faster in a car than on horseback.” He chuckled. “I much prefer the car. It is far kinder to the bones of an old man.”

  “You can’t get there by horseback or car,” I said. If he wanted the truth, there was no good way to put it.

  “Why is that?” he bristled as if he suspected I was still dodging the question.

  “Because it’s across the ocean,” Tilly replied bluntly.

  Merlin frowned. “Such a thing is not possible.”

  I spent the next half hour trying to explain the New World to someone who believed the world was flat.

  “That would explain a lot,” he murmured after I’d finished. “Then I take it New London is not the London I know just spruced up a bit?”

  “No,” I said gently, hearing the pang of loss in his tone. “To reach London, England, it would take about six hours by plane, four or five days by boat.” And you probably wouldn’t recognize it at all, I added to myself.

  He didn’t say anything for a minute. Maybe he was trying to reassess the enormity of his journey through time and space. When he spoke again, his voice sounded hollow and forlorn. “From what you have told me, were I to sail there or fly in one of those frightful contraptions, I would not find the home I knew or the people I loved.”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said.

  “Then by Jove,” he said, flinging off his sadness like a bothersome cloak, “I shall find a way back to my proper life. After all, I am Merlin!”

  “That’s the spirit,” I said with all the enthusiasm I could muster, because I doubted even he could manage it.

  “And until then,” he went on, “I intend to enjoy the miracles of this new world of yours and help you girls recover from the strange affliction that has befallen you.”

  I didn’t point out that he too appeared to be suffering from the same “affliction.” Instead I wished him success, and while he was still in gung-ho mode, proposed my solution to restocking Abracadabra.

  * * *

  When I opened for business the next morning, I found a middle-aged woman asleep on my doorstep. She didn’t look homeless. Her chin-length brown hair was well cut, and she was dressed in a stylish capri set and matching sandals. She didn’t respond to my voice, so I gave her shoulder a gentle shake. When that failed to rouse her, I started worrying she might be dead. From there it was a hop, skip, and jump to imagining myself a suspect for another murder, a serial killer by accident of time and place. I really didn’t want to call 911 again. I was still trying to decide what to do when she sprang up, wild-eyed and disoriented. For a moment we stared at each other, mouths gaping, but unable to speak. I managed to help her into the shop and get her settled in a folding chair I’d found and set beside the counter. By then she’d gathered her wits about her well enough to explain that she’d driven all night from North Carolina to reach me. I was her last hope. I almost groaned when she said that, because on its best days, magick doesn’t come with a guarantee, and we hadn’t seen our best days for some time now.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked, hoping it would be something simple, something within my current ability to accomplish.

  “Where should I begin?” she said vaguely.

  I hopped up to sit on the counter. “Let’s start with your name, since you already seem to know mine.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I’m Lilly, Lilly Gould. So pleased to meet you.” She started to extend her hand to me, but stopped when she realized we were too far apart.

  “Nice to meet you too, Lilly. Why don’t you tell me what brought you all this way?”

  “Right. Here’s the thing,” she began, “over the years I’ve dabbled a bit in witchcraft—you know? But this . . . this is far beyond my ability to deal with.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering if she was ever going to tell me.

  “Well, everything was going great until I opened my big mouth,” she said, shaking her head. “You see, I was a widow for five years when I met Neal. He’s everything my husband wasn’t—kind, soft spoken, thoughtful, a real gentleman. I thought we’d be together for the rest of our days. But then I told his daughter the truth.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “That she’s a spoiled brat who’s milking her father dry. She’s thirty years old; she has a decent job, but she keeps asking Neal to buy her expensive things, things she doesn’t need and doesn’t want to spend her own money on. A three-hundred-dollar purse? No problem, sweetheart. A cruise to the Caribbean? Sure, honey. The poor man is incapable of telling her no. So I did it for him. At first I think he was actually relieved that I did it. But then she had a tantrum, stormed out of his house and now won’t take his calls. Needless to say, I’ve become a pariah.” Tears flooded Lilly’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks, leaving dark trails of mascara in their wake. She opened her handbag and pulled out a travel pack of tissues. “You have to help me get him back,” she pleaded, wiping her face. “It is possible, isn’t it?”

  “I think you’ve got a good shot at it,” I said. Using a love spell or potion to make a stranger fall in love with you is wasted energy. I know from personal experience. Had it been possible, there would have been a number of boy bands camped out around my house when I was in my teens. On the other hand, using a spell to repair a relationship between two people who already loved each other was often successful. “I can tell you what to do, Lilly, but you’ll have to perform the ritual yourself.”

  She was nodding so fast, she looked like a bobble-head on a bumpy road. “I brought a notepad,” she said, rummaging in her purse again.

  “The Silver Ring Love Charm is a powerful spell,” I began once she was ready. “You’ll need a silver ring that’s never been worn, a white cloth, and a cup of white wine.” I spoke slowly enough for her to write it all down. “As you probably know, love spells should be performed under a full moon. You start by blessing the silver ring. Then you wrap the ring in the cloth and bury it underground. Pour the wine over the place where you’ve buried it and recite these words:

  Blessed Goddess, fair and true,

  this silver gift I offer you.

  Bless this ring and let me see

  my lover coming back to me.”

  She seemed to be struggling, so I waited for her to catch up. “Leave the ring there for a month and dig it up under the next full moon. Then wear it until he returns to you.”

  Lilly stopped writing and looked up at me. “That’s it?” She sounded disappointed.

  “Yes, but you must believe in your heart and mind that it will work. There cannot be any doubt.” For her to have driven up to New Camel as she had, I suspected that wouldn’t be a problem.

  After a moment’s consideration, I decided to give her a second spell to try in case the first one didn’t produce the desired result. I’d never before felt the need to do that, but my self-confidence had clearly hit an all-time low. I had to be careful about how I offered Lilly the extra spell, so I didn’t pass my doubts on to her. “I almost forgot,” I said, “we’re running a two-for-one deal on spells this week.” I hoped that hadn’t sounded as lame to her as it did to me.

  “Wow, I’ve never come across a sale on magick before,” she said, quickly erasing that concern. Knowing that Lilly had two spells to try, gave me a certain peace of mind and I couldn’t put a price on that. I gave her the details of the Lemon Love Spell. I was glad she’d be going back home to North Carolina to perform the rituals. She probably stood a better chance of success some distance away from me.

  The rest of the day passed quickly, the shop busier than it had been for the past few weeks. A lot of local customers came in for their beauty products and the chance to gossip about
the investigation into Jim’s death. Every last one of them swore they knew Tilly and I were innocent. If called upon, they assured me, they’d be happy to provide sterling character references. Maybe recent events had made me paranoid, but I couldn’t help wondering what they said when they weren’t in my shop.

  Chapter 12

  Elise sounded troubled when she called to ask if I would accompany her to the bank where she and Jim had a safety deposit box. Of course she had good reason to sound that way even if no new concerns had surfaced in the past few days. But knowing her as well as I did, I detected a different timbre in her voice as if she was struggling to keep her wits about her. Had I been expecting a horde of magick-starved customers to arrive, I still would have closed the shop to go with her.

  “Name the time and I’ll be there,” I said without hesitation.

  “I don’t want to disrupt your workday. Do you take a lunch break?”

  “Sorcerers can’t live on magick alone,” I replied, although I usually brought lunch from home or grabbed something nearby so I could keep the shop open.

  “Great, thanks. After the bank, I’ll pick up lunch for us.” We settled on noon.

  After searching for fifteen minutes, I found the sign we’d bought years ago for those times we had to close the shop during the workday. It was hand-painted in an overwrought Victorian style with a picture of a clock whose hands could be moved to show the time we’d be back. Between Bronwen, Morgana, Tilly, and me, there’d always been someone around to cover if one of us had to leave. Now that Tilly’s shop was closed, and she was wizard-sitting Merlin, there remained a grand total of me.

  I set the hands at one o’clock and locked up. There was no point in taking my car, which was still back at the house. A brisk walk would bring me to the bank in less than five minutes. The Schuyler Community was the oldest bank in the area and the only one located in the center of town. Two others were in strip malls several miles away to the north and east. The best part about the Schuyler was that everyone who worked there knew all of their depositors as well as their families. The worst part about the Schuyler was exactly the same thing. Familiarity of that nature was often a breeding ground for gossip. Over the years, the Schuyler had lost business to the other banks, simply because some people preferred to conduct their banking matters in a less homey, more clinical environment. My family had debated moving to another bank a couple of times, but in the end, convenience had kept us in town.

  I found Elise waiting for me outside the bank. “I want to catch you up before we go in,” she said after a hello hug. “When I called the bank after the funeral, I spoke to Debbie about having our safety deposit box unsealed and inventoried. She told me I’d have to get myself appointed administrator of the estate in order to do that, which I took care of yesterday.” Elise paused to take a breath. “There’s so much red tape to go through when a spouse dies, there’s no time to grieve properly. You’re expected to pick up and carry on as if everything is back to normal again. But it isn’t. And at times I don’t think it will ever be.” She heaved a tremulous sigh. “Sorry.” I nodded in understanding and let her continue. “I called Debbie this morning to make an appointment to take care of the box.”

  “She corrected me and said “boxes.”

  “Did you have more than one?” I asked.

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  Now I understood the cause of her agitation.

  “When I questioned Debbie about it, she said there were definitely two in both our names. At that point I pretended the second one had slipped my mind in all the turmoil. After I got off the phone with her, I immediately called Scott.” I must have had a blank look on my face, because she went on to explain that Scott was a colleague of Jim’s, his go-to attorney if he needed outside help. “He knew about the second box, but not why it existed or what it contained. He seemed totally surprised to learn that I had no knowledge of it. He said Jim would have had to forge my signature and photocopy my driver’s license to open it in both our names.”

  “So Jim rented the second box without ever mentioning it to you,” I repeated, trying to make sense of it. If I was surprised, I could imagine how the unexpected news had hit her. “Can you think of any reason why he would do that?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want me to know about what was in it. But then why put it in both our names? I’m completely at a loss. That’s why I wanted you to come along. By the time I got off the phone with Scott my thoughts were in a muddle.”

  “Don’t worry,” I linked my arm through hers, “We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  We marched in and headed straight for Debbie’s desk. She popped right up when she saw us coming and met us halfway across the carpeted area where the bank officers had their desks. She was a slim woman in her forties, with basic brown hair in a bouncy wedge. Her clothes were bank conservative, with the exception of big hoop earrings. She pressed Elise’s hand between her own two. “How are you?” Her grim smile reminded me of a funeral director.

  “I’m okay,” Elise replied, which was far from true. But answering any other way would have started a pointless exchange that would have wasted time and made everyone more uncomfortable.

  “Good, good,” Debbie said, releasing her hand. “We’ll try to take care of this annoying business as quickly as possible. Do you have the papers naming you administrator of the estate?” she asked as she led us back to her desk. Elise produced them and Debbie took a minute to glance over them. Satisfied, she handed them back, then walked us over to the vault at the rear of the bank where we were met by a more senior bank officer. George Augales was a compact man who had to be flirting with fifty. He thanked Debbie and said he’d take over from there. It seemed like they’d choreographed this visit ahead of time to keep the bereaved from having to wait. I wondered if they’d synchronized their watches too. I berated myself for being cynical. They were probably trying to be considerate. Nope, the reasons notwithstanding, their studied compassion irritated me. I’d been spared this particular aspect of what I’d come to think of as “death chores.” Morgana and Bronwen had never kept a safety deposit box. Instead they’d cast wards around the shop and house to keep anyone with malice in their heart from entering. Of course I now had the security system, so I didn’t have to rely on the protection spells. But maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to renew them anyway.

  George was a by-the-numbers kind of guy. He asked Elise to sign both signature cards, which he’d already plucked from the files in anticipation of her arrival. The card for the secret box bore one supposed signature by Elise and three others by Jim. Elise spent a few seconds studying the signature that wasn’t hers, before signing on the line below with a shaky hand. She handed George the one key she had, and he used it, along with the master key, to access the first box. Since Elise didn’t have a key to the other one, George had to break the lock. I was surprised by the size of the secret box. It was one of the largest in the vault. Elise had to be wondering what on Earth Jim was keeping in there. I sure was.

  George carried both boxes out of the vault and led us into one of the two small rooms where the bank’s patrons could look though the contents of their boxes in private. George placed Elise’s boxes on the table. Since he hadn’t known I was coming, he excused himself to bring in a third chair.

  When we were settled, Elise opened the small box first. In her place, I would have started with the secret one. Maybe she was putting it off, afraid what she might find out about the man she’d married, the father of her children. The first box held mostly papers, the deed to the house and titles to the two cars, her marriage license, the family’s social security cards and birth certificates, plus a number of federal savings bonds in the children’s names. George noted each item on a legal pad. The last thing was a black velvet jewelry pouch containing three gold bracelets, a sapphire and diamond cocktail ring and a pair of small diamond stud earrings. Judging by Elise’s face, no surprises there. Before lifting the lid of the secret box, she turned
to me. I nodded to let her know I was there for her no matter what she was about to discover. George was clicking and unclicking his pen, probably wishing we’d wrap things up so he could go for lunch. I looked pointedly at his hand holding the pen, and he was astute enough to realize his impatience was showing. He set the pen down and gave me a sour smile.

  Elise lifted the lid of the box as gingerly as if she thought a rubber snake might pop out. Then her forehead bunched in a frown. The box was filled with bulging manila envelopes that seemed barely able to contain their contents. She withdrew one of them, opened the little aluminum clasp and peered inside. Her mouth fell open. It was the first time I’d ever seen someone actually look dumbstruck, but there was no better word to describe her expression at that moment.

  “What is it?” I couldn’t keep myself from asking. She upended the envelope, letting its contents fall onto the table. Ten neat stacks of hundred-dollar bills. George sat up straighter and retrieved his pen, while Elise counted the bills in one of the packs—one hundred. Easy math. The envelope contained one hundred thousand dollars. She pulled the other envelopes out of the box. There were five in all—a cool half million. She fell back against the chair shaking her head. George excused himself again and returned a minute later with a cash counter. The accounting had to be accurate, because the government was going to want its share.

  Elise hardly spoke a word until we were back in her car. George had supplied her with a canvas tote in which to carry home the contents of both boxes. I’d taken care of the necessary thank yous, because she seemed to be operating on autopilot, minus the speech option. When we reached her car, she handed me the keys, acknowledging that she was too distracted to drive safely.

  “Where to?” I asked, sliding into the driver’s seat.

  She took so long to answer that I was starting to repeat the question when she finally murmured, “Anywhere to get takeout—you choose.” Less than fifteen minutes later, we pulled to the curb in front of Abracadabra with two turkey sandwiches, Russian dressing, pickles, bottled iced tea, and a small bag of potato chips.