Barely Bewitched (11 page)

I wiped the sweat off my forehead and got up, glad that I’d decided to leave Mercutio home to sleep while I went to my magic lesson. Bloody graffiti was the last thing anyone needed to see. I used my fingertips to close my car door. I shuddered and walked away from my house.

I paused outside Doc Barnaby’s place because I could hear Willie Nelson music coming from behind the fence. I opened the gate and peeked into his backyard, my mouth dropping open. There were about thirty people, wearing pajamas and bathrobes, reclining on blankets and pillows. They ate coffee cake and fruit between doing the two-step. It was like an ad for Bed, Bath & Beyond the Bend.

Barefoot children chased each other innocently, and I thought about the scalded trees and the fear-o-gram in the front seat of my car that was way too close to them. What if they’d seen Incendio while he was up to no good? They could’ve been scarred for life, like I was likely to be, or maybe he would’ve done something to them so there wouldn’t have been any witnesses left behind. I clenched my jaw and marched away. Yep, something was going to have to be done about that warlock.

I walked to the entrance of my neighborhood and flipped my phone open. I told Jordan in a flat voice that there was a problem with my car and that I needed him to pick me up for our tutoring session, then I sat down on the cold curb to wait.

I noticed a dark blue Chevy TrailBlazer across the road. As I stared, my cell rang and I flipped it open.

“Hello.”

“Not driving your car today?” the muffled male voice said.

If my hair hadn’t already been piled on top of my head in a tortoiseshell clip, it would’ve stood straight up on the back of my neck.

“Who is this?” I asked, standing up.

“I’m going to make you sorry,” he said in a low voice. The connection went silent.

The truck pulled out from the curb and squealed its tires as it drove away. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see the license plate number. My hands shook as I closed the phone, and I sunk back down to the curb.

I didn’t think the voice had been Incendio’s. It had sounded a little like Earl’s, but he didn’t drive a TrailBlazer. Also, the trees had been burned with paper-cutter precision, which was definitely, almost positively, Incendio’s handiwork.

Still, I knew, sure I was sitting there, that the driver of the TrailBlazer had messed up my car, which meant there had been two dangerous overnight visitors trying to put the fear of homicidal maniacs into me. A totally unnecessary and redundant thing to do, I might add.

Chapter 15

I called Zach to tell him about my car being vandalized, but my call went straight to voicemail. I grimaced. He’d probably worked all night handling the dust-crazed people.
My fault.
I decided not to say that I needed him. I just asked him to call me back when he got a chance. I closed the phone and tried to figure out how to deal with the jerk from the TrailBlazer myself.

When my phone rang, the Martina McBride ringtone startled me so badly, I swear my butt rose two feet off the curb when I jumped. I banged my bottom upon landing and winced. I didn’t recognize the number of the incoming call.

I flipped it open, hesitating for a moment before answering. I felt like shouting, “I don’t care how psychotic you are; a killer would never get away with an insanity plea in Duvall, Texas!” Instead, I went with a quiet, “Hello.”

“Miss Tamara?”

“Um, who’s this?”

“Mr. Jenson.”

My spine melted with relief. Mr. Jenson, Bryn’s butler, put the
gentle
in English gentleman.

“Hi, Mr. Jenson. What can I do for you?”

“It was Mr. Lyons’s intention to hire you to provide dessert for a party he’s having tomorrow night.”

“Oh, that’s right. That’s tomorrow, huh?”

“Quite. Did he speak to you about it?”

“He sure did, but when was the last time he talked to
you
about it?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Yeah. Kind of a lot’s happened since then.”
Like my being banned from Casa Lyons.
“You’ll probably want to talk to him to see whether he still wants me helping out with that party.”

“Have you been paid?” he asked.

“Yep, but I’ll give the money back. No hard feelings.”

Mr. Jenson cleared his throat. “My dear, I would not dream of troubling Mr. Lyons with domestic details. That is, after all, why he employs me. We will proceed as previously planned. There will be roughly forty guests, and our kitchen, which I believe you have admired in the past, will be at your complete disposal, with the exception of the one hour directly preceding the party when the caterers from Dallas will need to make use of it for their preparations.”

“That sounds real good, except for the fact that I can’t get past the gate. See, we had a little—”

“Your pardon, Miss Tamara.”

“Um, yes?”

“I shall manage everything. It will be most convenient for you to come in through the kitchen entrance.”

Through a back door.
I couldn’t believe Mr. Jenson was going to sneak me in. Did he really think that much of my baking? Maybe so. It is my one talent. But going against Bryn’s direct orders? Couldn’t they kick him out of the butlers’ union for that?

“Mr. Jenson, if you say you want me, I’ll be there. I’ve got a full day today, but I can start work in the evening. Will you be there tonight?”

“Certainly. Ring this number just prior to your arrival.”

“Okay. See you then.”

“Have a pleasant day, Miss Tamara.”

Not possible
. I closed the phone. I was a little nervous about going to Bryn’s house when I knew he didn’t want me there, but I couldn’t let Mr. Jenson down. Also, maybe Bryn and I would bump into each other. And maybe if I said I was sorry, we could go back to the way things had been earlier in the week. Except—was that a good idea?

After all, I was supposed to stay away from Bryn. And now, for the first time since Georgia Sue’s Halloween party, he was leaving me alone. I chewed on my lip. I kept saying I wanted him to stay away from me. So how come I wasn’t happy about it now that he was?

It was about ten more minutes before Jordan Perth showed up in his rented BMW. With the convertible top down, he looked like he’d just escaped the set of a pop music video. Justin Timberlake played helpfully from the stereo.

I got in the passenger seat. “What did they say?”

“Who and about what?” Jordan asked.

“The Conclave about Incendio.”

“Oh. No word yet.”

“Did you tell them it was urgent? Because I think he came by and burned down some trees in my neighborhood, trying to scare me. The scaring me part worked, by the way.”

Jordan frowned.

“I don’t suppose if he tries to kill me, you’d be able to stop him.”

Jordan turned red, and I had my answer. “I’ll speak to him. The Conclave hasn’t ordered him to kill anyone, so if he does, he’ll have broken the law and will have to face the consequences.”

“No offense, but since I’ll be dead, that’s not very helpful.”

“Listen, just try to stay away from him. And if you do see him, don’t provoke him. Incendio gets carried away in the heat of the moment. No pun intended.”

I clenched my jaw. That was it? That was all the help I could expect from Jordan? Lousy advice?

He continued. “Incendio’s got a bad temper, and you seem to push his buttons. You remind him of someone—”

“Not my fault!”

“Agreed. But what I was going to say is that once he’s cooled off, he’s reasonable enough. I bet by now he’s nursing a hangover and thinking better of causing trouble for you. Just avoid him, and you’ll be fine.”

We drove in silence for a few minutes, then he said, “Now, as to your magical education, are you ready to begin?”

“I guess so.”

“That’s what I like. Unbridled enthusiasm.”

I fought not to roll my eyes.

“I noticed you didn’t bring a notebook. So you’ve got a photographic memory, then?”

“Not exactly,” I said. If he’d wanted me to bring a notebook, why hadn’t he said so?

He reached beside his seat and handed across a small binder. I opened it and found a pen and white pad of paper.

“Thank you,” I said.

“There are three main components to the success of any spell, but one of them is absolutely essential.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said, yanking the cap off my pen. The cap slipped from my hand and flew out of the car. In the side mirror, I watched it bounce off the concrete. “Whoops.”

“Control. One must have absolute control over one’s power.”

He glanced at my hand, holding the now capless pen. “Write that down, love. In fact, you might want to underline it. Several times.”

I frowned. As I wrote and underlined, I had to ask, “Is it important to be able to feel the amount of power you put into a spell in order to control it?”

“It’s indispensable.”

I was afraid he was going to say that. It was the key problem I’d been having since coming into my powers the week before. Whether my powers were tepid or boiling enough to bubble over, I couldn’t tell at all. For the most part, I was numb to magic. Except when I came into contact with a certain blue-eyed wizard whose kitchen I was going to hijack.

“Why did you ask about being able to sense magic? Have you found that challenging?”

“Kind of. Is there a trick to it?”

“No. Most can easily feel their own power or lack of it. It’s a constant source of frustration for those who are unsuccessfully trying to grow their powers.”

“You said
most
. What about the people who can’t feel magic?”

He glanced at me. “You mean who can’t feel it at all?”

I shrugged.

“That would be a disaster. Better not to do any spells than to try to spell-cast without a sense of one’s magic.”

“Well then, can you flunk me from basic training or whatever?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, if this was the army, I’d have flat feet and they wouldn’t let me enlist. I don’t feel magic.”
Except for Bryn’s.

“That’s pretty implausible.” He studied me through narrowed eyes. “It sounds like the kind of thing you decided to say to get out of the Initial Challenge.”

I sighed. “Okay. If you want to be the driver’s ed teacher with a blind student, it’s up to you. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Chapter 16

None of the small spells I tried made anything happen. It was like I was fourteen all over again, except instead of feeling like crying and riding my bike over to Zach’s to avoid magic lessons, I felt like bopping Jordan Perth in the nose and eating a handful of chocolate-covered almonds.

I sat at the edge of Lover’s Lake swimming hole because Jordan had decided it was the best place to focus energy and to get in touch with the elements. It made sense. The windmills are across Corsic Creek, so we had three of the four elements covered, namely wind, water, and earth.

I was supposed to be concentrating on sensing my magic. What I sensed was that I needed to get to work on my to-do list. I needed to steal my family jewelry back, to get Abby to lead me to some pixies, and to make sweets for Bryn’s party. I also needed to find out who in town that owned a TrailBlazer had been watching too many horror movies. I’d looked through my incoming-call log, but the TrailBlazer number wasn’t listed. It just said
restricted
, which was ironic, since I
wished
someone would restrict the nasty guy’s calls, but they obviously hadn’t yet.

The only other person, besides Incendio and Bryn, that I’d had a big fight with lately was Earl, but his car was some little black foreign thing. He also sometimes drove a van that read
Stanton Antiques
on the side when he was hauling big items to his pawnshop or his momma’s antique store. But maybe he’d borrowed the truck? Then again, maybe someone I’d never suspect had inhaled a big clump of pixie dust and had gone crazy. If so, it could be anyone
.
I shuddered at the thought, which brought me back to my to-do list and finding a pixie to help me counterspell the dust.

“Hello!” Jordan snapped.

I looked up. “Yes?”

“Any progress sensing your power?”

If I said no, he would probably make me sit around on the moss all morning.

“You know, I do think I felt something.”

“Excellent. Let’s try another earth spell. All you need to do is tell me what direction the energy is flowing while I cast.”

He brought out a wand and flicked it several times from right to left as he praised the earth for being the earth. Yep, that was the whole spell.

“What direction?” he asked.

I had a one in four chance, and I had seen him move the wand, which seemed like a pretty good clue. “East.”

“Very good. Now you’ll try. Use my wand to focus energy. You can use my verse if you’d like or come up with one of your own. Over time, you’ll select your words very carefully. It’s important that they have meaning and texture for you.”

“Texture?” I asked, taking his wand.

“Yes. Some words are slippery, some hearty. Some bring a color or a feeling to mind. You’ll need to begin keeping lists.”

“What words are slippery? Besides slippery itself, I mean. Like slick? Slimy?”

He sighed. “No, it’s not their actual meaning. It’s a feeling they conjure.”

Being that we’d already established that I’m feeling-impaired, magically speaking, I wasn’t too glad to hear that words don’t mean what they mean. I pursed my lips and tightened my grip on the wand.

“Nice Earth, thanks for being solid and round. Now, it’d be great if you could move the ground,” I said.

I didn’t think anything happened, but wasn’t sure until Jordan said in a disgusted voice, “Sodding hell.”

“What’s sodding?”

“Look, you must try harder. We’ve got loads of material to cover. Surely, you can do better. I’ve experienced your power and can sense it now. You have more than enough to perform these simple spells.”

I slapped my fist in my palm angrily. He could feel my power, and I couldn’t? So darn unfair! What was wrong with me?

“This is what always happens. You think you’re the first one to try to teach me magic? I lived eighteen years with two great witches.” And the ghost of a third. “They were determined. We tried all sorts of stuff. None of it worked.”

“But you did spell-cast last week.”

I shrugged. Magic had happened, but, for the most part, not what I’d intended. Plus, Bryn and his father, Lennox, had been spell-casting a lot, and I’d used some of Momma’s memorabilia and Aunt Mel’s plants. I wasn’t at all sure that I hadn’t somehow tapped into someone else’s power and hijacked a little of it.

“Maybe it was some fluke. Some phase of the moon or something that made magic work for me that time.”

“You’re not a lunar witch.”

“How do you know?”

“Did you invoke the moon in your spells?” he demanded.

“Nope, but I was out at night plenty. Maybe the moon decided to help me out.”

“What about the tor? Did you cast any spells from there?”

Yeah, some that had turned out really scary. I nodded.

“Let’s go. I had thought to start small, but given that you don’t appear to have any talent whatsoever for connecting to your power, we need all the help we can get.”

I looked at my watch. “Okay, but if nothing happens there, I’d like to get dropped back off at home. I’ve got a lot of stuff to do, and if I’m dying at the end of the week, I’m kind of pressed for time, you know.”

He smiled, though I didn’t think that was especially amusing.

“All joking aside, they are going to let me out of this challenge when you tell them that I can’t cast even the most basic spell, right?” I asked.

“I don’t know that they’ll believe it. I’m not even sure that I do.”

I folded my arms across my chest and glared at him. Couldn’t he tell that I’d tried my best . . . Well, that I’d tried my best at first, before all the daydreaming?

We were halfway back to the car when I spotted several women having a picnic with their kids. I glanced back to the spot where Jordan and I had been, wondering if they’d seen us. I was pretty sure they could’ve if they’d been looking. I studied the group, and my stomach knotted. Standing and staring in my direction was none other than the one person in town who’d sworn to run me out of it. Jenna Reitgarten.

I decided to tell everyone that Jordan was a part-time symphony conductor. It was the only thing I could think of, other than the truth, that I could say if Jenna started telling people about what she’d seen us doing at the lake. Anybody who’d ever heard me sing knew I wasn’t musical, but a lot of singers can’t sing and that doesn’t stop them from being on the radio.

I stomped my foot on the floor of the car. Why did Jenna have to pick that spot for a picnic? All my luck lately had been bad, and it seemed like she was always around to take advantage of that. Case in point, when I’d pawned the family jewelry. It was meant to be temporary, but Earl had been mad when I didn’t let him rape me on his couch, so he’d sold the jewelry to Jenna, my least favorite person in town. And naturally, she hadn’t let me buy it back. And naturally, she had the all-important emerald earrings that I really needed to get my hands on.

“What’s on your mind?” Jordan asked as he drove us up Macon Hill.

“It’s not fair that Incendio got so much power and some of us who wouldn’t burn anyone’s house down didn’t get enough.”

“I know,” Jordan muttered. “But what I want you to concentrate on is your magic, love. I really believe that you have potential.”

“Thanks. I’ll try,” I said and smiled to let him know I appreciated his support.

Halfway to the top, he parked, and we got out and walked on the grass just off the path. He stood with his arms a few inches out from his sides, his palms down and fingers spread as if trying to absorb the tor’s energy.

“Well, this is a more impressive ley center than I expected. And you have it all to yourself in this little town. No wonder Lyons is here.”

I shrugged. “I don’t feel its magic.”

“Well, it’s here, and I sense your connection to it. Let me try to help you feel it. Give me possession of your hold on the tor.”

“I don’t have a hold on it.”

“Indulge me. Say: ‘Jordan Robert Perth, I convey my share of the Duvall Tor to you.’ ”

“Hmm. Sounds kind of formal. Do I need to consult a lawyer? Oh right, I’m not allowed to talk to the only lawyer I know.”

Jordan waited. “You mentioned being in a hurry.”

“It’s not that I’ve got any share in the tor. My personal property is pretty darn limited, if you want to know the truth, but I don’t like saying any thing that says I’m giving up a piece of Duvall. I’m sure you’ve got some real nice tors all your own in England.”

“There is Glastonbury, though it can hardly compare to this,” he said, as sarcastic as Edie whenever she’s bored or tired or in the vicinity. Speaking of Edie, where was she? I needed her help to rob Jenna. And it would’ve been nice if she’d been around after the faery dust spill. I could’ve used her advice about it. She’d promised to check things out with Incendio and come back. Of all the times for her to desert me, this was the worst.

“If you please,” Jordan said.

“No, I’m not gonna say that. Just give me a spell to try.”

He threw his hands in the air impatiently. “November first is only three days away. Try anything.”

I dropped to the grass and pulled off my boots and socks. “I’m better in bare feet,” I explained. I stood and stretched my arms out. “I’ll try that earth spell again, but if nothing happens, I’m going to quit for the day.” I squared my shoulders and concentrated hard. Then I repeated my call for the earth to move. The grass didn’t even ripple. I glanced at Jordan, who shook his head. I stomped my foot angrily, and tried once more. Still nothing.

Damn broken magic.

I grabbed my boots and socks, and we went to the car in silence. I wouldn’t say I was totally screwed, but just because I didn’t say it, didn’t mean it wasn’t true.