A Little Night Magic
Read A Little Night Magic Online
Authors: Lucy March
For Jenny, who saved my life, thus making it possible for me to write this book
Acknowledgments
I don’t know if every author eventually comes to a book that actively tries to kill her, but for me, this was it. Writing it as I went through a devastating divorce and a simultaneously terrifying and euphorious life-reboot, I found it to be both trial and triumph, and now what’s left is this, a story about a woman whose life turned her upside down and shook her until her courage came out. Probably not a coincidence that this is the book I was supposed to write during this time.
After such an extended period of alternately collapsing and forcing myself to get back up, merely thanking the people who gave me the strength to keep moving—through my life and through the book—seems too anemic an act considering the miracle they wrought through their support and patience. I am now sitting safely on the other side of that treacherous cavern, book in hand and the sunny road to a new life stretched out before me, and “thank you” just doesn’t cut it.
Still, thanks are what I have to give, so here we go:
To my agent, Stephanie Rostan, who held my hand when I quit this insane business forever, and then held it again when I changed my mind a week later … thank you.
To my editor, Jennifer Enderlin, whose patience and genius inspired me to make this book as good as I had the skill to make it … thank you.
To Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart, CJ Barry, Toni McGee Causey, Molly Haselhorst, Ellen Henderson, Catherine Wade, Rebecca Michaels, R. L. LaFevers, and the Glindas, who trudged through endless versions of this dragon, then comforted and soothed me through the process of slaying it … thank you.
To the Betties, who kept me sane by indulging my insanity … thank you.
And to Alastair Stephens, who found me at my lowest moment, picked me up, dusted me off, and loved me anyway … thank you.
Contents
Praise for A Little Night Magic
1
There’s magic linoleum at Crazy Cousin Betty’s Waffle House.
Okay, maybe it’s not
magic,
exactly. It’s this one weird sparkly blue square, in the midst of all the solid, checkerboarded blues and whites. I first noticed it when I was six, and I remember tugging on Betty’s periwinkle blue skirt and pointing down at the floor. Betty, who’d seemed ancient to me even then, knelt down to level her wrinkled eyes with mine.
“Oh, that? It’s a magic square,” she’d said. “Step on it. Make a wish. It’ll come true.”
“Really?”
She winked. “You bet. But don’t go just stepping on it every time you want a new doll, or a motorcycle. Magic’s not to be messed with, Olivia.” And then she stood up, mussed my hair, and moved on.
I didn’t believe her. Even at that tender age, I could tell bullcrap when I heard it.
But then, right after I’d started working at CCB’s, I desperately wanted Robbie Pecorino to ask me to prom. On a whim, I stepped on the square late one night, and boom—two days later, he asked me. So, that was cool. But then there was the time I wished my college boyfriend, Charlie, would give me a little more space, and he ended up dumping me to date his roommate, Neil. Finally, six years ago, when I was twenty-two, I used it to wish my mother didn’t have cancer anymore.
Two months later, she died.
I stopped wishing after that. I mean, I didn’t
really
believe that it was magic and could grant wishes, but … I kind of believed it was magic and could grant wishes.
And
that it was a sadistic little bastard, to be avoided at all costs. Whenever I took orders at Booth 9, I always stood either too close or too far away, just in case I absently wished for anything while standing on the square. Still, on that Friday night in June as I swished my mop over the square, I considered, just for a second, making the wish that would finally help me get my stupid act together.
“You’re not done yet?”
I looked up from where I was standing in the middle of the dim and empty dining room, mop handle in my hand as one white-Kedded foot hovered over the square, and there was Tobias Shoop, CCB’s night cook, his broad form clad in his standard outfit of crumpled jeans and a black T-shirt. He had a smile that was a little too big for his face, and one of his front teeth sort of overlapped the other, and his five o’clock shadow came in almost while you watched, but I loved him, goddamnit. And I had to do something about that, because loving this man was gonna kill me. I couldn’t wish the love away with him standing right there looking at me, though, so I pulled my foot back and started mopping again. “Do I look like I’m done?”
His bulk nearly blocked all the light streaming from the kitchen into the dining room as he leaned against the doorjamb, simply watching me in that way he had of simply … watching. He gave me one of his classic Tobias looks—a combination of total focus and mild smolder that I had been stupid enough to mistake for romantic interest—and strode toward me. “You need help?”
“Nope.” I set the mop aside and looked at him, his dark hair glinting with premature strands of gray at the temples. My fingers itched to run through that hair, to indulge in the same traitorous instinct that had screwed everything up in the first place.
“I’m almost done,” I said coolly. “You go. I’ll lock up.”
His response to this was to cross to Booth 9, haul himself up on the table, and stare at me.
I continued mopping. “You can leave, you know. Believe it or not, before you got here, I used to lock up by myself all the time.”
“I don’t mind.”
I do,
I thought. I swished my mop over the square, wishing he would just go away and leave me alone. Tragically, I wasn’t standing on the square at the moment I wished it and so he remained right where he was.
“You ever going to stop being mad at me?” he asked.
“I’m not mad,” I said automatically, then swished my mop over the square again.
I wish you’d break out in boils. Swish.
“I’m not an idiot, Liv. I know you’re pissed.” He let out a long sigh. “Can we at least talk about it?”
“I’d be happy to, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Swish swish. I hope your ear hair grows freakishly long. Swish.
“Bullshit.”
I stopped mopping and looked at him. “If you’re trying to get on my good side, you suck at it.”
“I’m not trying to get on your good side,” he said. “I just want us to be like we used to be. You know. Before you got all mad.”
Grow a clubfoot.
“I’m not mad.”
He hopped off the table and grabbed my arm, and I felt the electricity rush through me, the way it always did at his touch. I pulled my arm away and forced myself to look at him, doing my best to maintain an expression of steely indifference, but likely landing somewhere between abject adoration and poorly suppressed rage.
“You’re saying we’re fine, then?” he asked, his tone thick with skepticism.
“Yep.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, challenging me. “Then come over tonight and watch
The Holy Grail.
”
I looked at him, softening for a moment, remembering all the nights we’d spent over the last year and a half watching stupid movies, talking for hours about nothing and everything. Then those memories had a head-on collision with the memory of what happened during Movie Night last Friday, and I stopped softening.
A clubfoot and a hunchback.
“Can’t. I have to pack.”
He released my arm. “Pack? For where?”
I took a breath, feeling a little nervous but keeping what I hoped was an air of confidence in my tone. “Scotland.”
He drew back in surprise. “Scotland? Why?”
“Because that’s where the dart landed,” I said, keeping a sharp tone of defiance in my voice. “I’m starting in Scotland, anyway. I’m going to travel all over Europe. You know, like college kids do after graduation.”
“What? Backpacking?”
“Yeah. The idea just popped in my head, and at first I thought,
Wow, that’s insane,
but the more I think about it the more awesome it sounds. I’ve got money saved up, and between that and the sale of the house—”
“You’re selling your
house
?”
“—I should have a good six months before I have to settle down and get a job somewhere, but by then I figure I’ll know where I want to be. I’ll waitress again, maybe, but this time in Italy, or Vienna. Or, if I have to come back to the States, maybe Atlanta, or San Diego. Somewhere warm, I think.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I stopped to look at him, taking him in. He was broadly built, and had the kind of quiet strength about him that no one ever tested. He was smart, confident, and thoughtfully quiet, until you got him talking about the things that fascinated him, like sci-fi/fantasy novels and the way conspiracy theories spread like viruses of the intellect. He was the simultaneous symbol of everything that was right with my life
and
everything that was wrong.
And it was time to let him go.
“I’m talking about leaving. Going. Good-bye.”
He absorbed this for a moment. “If this is because of what happened between us last week—”
I snorted, a little too loudly. “Back it up, Superego. Not everything is about you.”
“The timing seems a little conspicuous, that’s all.”
I shrugged. “I mean, yeah, sure, throwing myself at you after
a year and a half
of waiting for you to make the first move, only to be rejected and then completely ignored for
three days
—”
“Christ, Liv, I said I was sorry.”
“—might or might not have inspired me to print out a picture of you and put it on my corkboard, and I might or might not have thrown a dart at you and missed, hitting my world map poster by mistake.”
“Well,” he said flatly. “At least you’re not mad.”
“I will neither confirm nor deny any of that, but the fact is, when I blew the plaster dust off my world map and saw that gaping hole next to Edinburgh, it hit me what a great idea it was.” I sighed and looked at him. “I’m twenty-eight, Tobias. I’m tired of waiting for my life to come find me, so I’m gonna go find it.”
He stared at me. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
And suddenly, insanely, I felt tears come to my eyes. “I have to leave first.”
He shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you.” The terror on his face sent a jolt of pain through me, and I held up my hand to keep him from saying anything, not that he was jumping at the chance. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to kiss you again. I’ve learned my lesson.”
