For Love or Magic (14 page)

“I don't like that guy, Ellie. I get a bad feeling. You shouldn't be making friends with him.”

“Gee,” I said. “You want me away from the handsome British guy. What a surprise.”

Judd got up and moved toward me, his ghostly form crowding me on the desk. “Look, you want to move on, move on. You have my blessing. Just don't do it with him.”

“I'm not doing it with
anyone,
” I said. “Didn't you hear me? I'm crazy. You made me crazy. You broke me and you left me here, all broken, and now I'm not getting involved with anyone else because between you and my father, I may never trust a man again. So congratulations, Judd. You got what you wanted, and I got the mess you left behind.”

Judd stared down at me, his eyes soft, the way he used to back when I thought he hung the moon. “You're still my girl, Ellie.”

I was about to argue with him, tell him that I wasn't his
anything
anymore, but then the door opened and Judd disappeared into a single point of light, like an old TV snapping off. I straightened my posture, my heart speeding up, and it wasn't until Larry closed the door behind him that I realized, one, that I'd been expecting Desmond, and two, that I was disappointed when it wasn't him.

Oh, that's not good.

Larry trudged over to the desk. “You okay?”

I nodded. My head hurt a bit as I did, but it wasn't too bad. “Yeah.” Something about Larry's presence, cranky and mundane, was comforting. I motioned toward the bar. “Everything okay out there?”

“Frankie and Amber left, so, yeah. You need to go to the hospital or something?”

“No,” I said. “I'm okay.”

Larry eyed me suspiciously. “You're not gonna go after Amber now, are you? Because I can't have that personal vendetta shit going on at my bar.”

“No,” I said, and hopped off his desk. “I think I can let it go.”

He grunted approval. “You gonna sue me?”

I smiled. “Not unless you grab my ass, Larry.”

He nodded, and his shoulders seemed to relax a bit. “Can you finish your shift, or do you need me to cover for you?”

I clasped my hands over my heart. “Aw, Larry. You would do that for me?”

His eyes narrowed and he tried to look gruff, but I had seen it, and he couldn't make me unsee it; Larry cared about me. Or at least he cared about the possibility that I could sue him, since I was attacked on his property. Either way, I was kinda touched.

“It's okay,” I said. “It's only five-thirty. I don't want to leave you stranded for the night.”

“Good,” he said, walking over behind his desk. “There are thirsty people at the bar, and I've got work to do. Shut the door on your way out.”

I smiled, even though he wasn't looking at me, and put my hand on the doorknob … except, I didn't. I didn't actually touch it, but I could feel it, the workings of the metal as the inner shaft twirled and the door opened, as if on its own power.

Except it wasn't on its own power. When I looked down, I could see disappearing trails of electric blue light as my hand clasped around the doorknob, just a second after it opened for me.

I hadn't even been trying.

I turned around and looked at Larry in a panic. He was less than ten feet away. There were no tendrils of blue light, nothing dancing around the room, but still.

“You feeling okay, Larry?” I asked. “Any … um … tingling in your hands or anything?”

Larry looked up from his computer. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” I looked at my watch; it was barely six o'clock, and the sun wouldn't be down for another three hours. I could go home, but I needed the tips.

“Bar's on the other side of the door,” Larry grumbled, and I went out and finished my shift.

 

Chapter 8

Three days later, there was a knock on my door.

At first, I was annoyed. It had been my first day off since starting at Happy Larry's, and my intention was to spend it in solitude. Bartending was keeping me in lights and kibble, but being surrounded by people every day was making my essential misanthropy worse. Although Amber Dorsey had had the good sense to stay away after the attack, between Frankie Biggs and the rest of the idiots who hung out at Happy Larry's, I was beginning to think that Sartre was onto something with his whole “hell is other people” shtick. So when the knock came, I was inclined to ignore it, except that the windows were open, and whoever it was could probably hear my laptop playing the DVD I'd gotten at the library.

I hit the pause button and looked down at Seamus, who sat next to me on the couch, not moving as usual. I pushed his shoulder off my hip and went over to the front door, hoping I had the energy to politely turn away whoever was fool enough to knock on it.

The man just stood there, unstable on his feet, his eyes glassy and unfocused. He had a full dark beard shot with a few touches of silver, which seemed premature, since he looked to be mid-thirties at the most. His clothes were new; as a matter of fact, the size sticker on his cheap jeans was still stuck to his thigh; he wore a 34 x 32. His shoulders were broad, but slumped, and he squinted as though he'd just stepped into the sun from a dark place.

“Who are you?” I said, but the second I said it, I knew. My heart started pounding in my chest, and I stepped out onto the porch to look around, to see if there was a trace of whoever had dumped him on my porch.

“Oh, Jesus,” I said, and put my arm around Tobias's waist as I led him into my house. “It's okay. Everything's okay. Can I get you some water?”

I led him to the couch, sitting him where I had been a few moments before. Seamus moved out of the way just in time, and then sniffed at Tobias's leg as I sat on the coffee table in front of him.

“Tobias? I need you to look at me, okay?”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, hit the flashlight button that turned on the flash by the camera lens, and pointed it at his eyes. He shrank away from me, but I put my hand gently on his face to keep him from turning away.

“I just need to see,” I said, but he couldn't stand the brightness enough to keep from squinting his eyes. I turned off the flash and hit Desmond's number, trying not to think about what it meant that Tobias had been so unceremoniously deposited on my doorstep.

“Eliot?” Desmond's voice came crisply through the phone. Wherever he was, it was too quiet to be Happy Larry's.

“Desmond, I need you to come over, right now. Bring your magical emergency kit.”

“What's happened?”

I hung up on him and dialed Stacy Easter's number, grateful that Addie had come into Happy Larry's during the week and programmed the essential Nodaway Falls magical phone book into my phone. While it rang, Seamus put his head on Tobias's lap and set it there, and Tobias just stared at me. Well, less
at
me than at a spot somewhere over and past my left shoulder. I reached out and touched his hand. “It's going to be okay.”

“Hello?” A man's voice answered Stacy's phone; I assumed it was the much-talked-about boyfriend, Leo.

“Is Stacy there?”

“She's out back. Who's this?”

“I'm Eliot. I'm new in town.”

“Eliot? I've heard about you.” There was a pause, indicating that what he'd heard probably hadn't been great.

“Leo, I need you to get Stacy, and the two of you need to bring Liv to my house, right now, okay? Don't let her come alone.”

There was a moment of taut silence, and Leo said, “Is everything okay?”

I hope so,
I thought, but all I said was,
“Now,”
and hung up, and then, because there was nothing left for me to do, I waited, with my thoughts circling around me like debris in a cyclone. Tobias had been returned, which was good news, but I didn't know what it meant. My father had gotten Tobias freed from wherever he was, which was what I'd asked him to do. He'd kept his word, so there was that. It had happened pretty quickly, though, which confirmed my suspicions that Emerson had had something to do with Tobias's disappearance in the first place, and judging by Tobias's appearance, wherever he'd been hadn't been the Ritz. If Tobias had simply been pulled out of Nodaway Falls by ASF and been assigned somewhere else, I doubted they'd just send him back immediately; it would be weeks to extract him from his assignment and replace him, not days. Then again, in the magical world, when Emerson Streat made a phone call …

“Oh, god.” I put my hand to my forehead, as if that would stop my thoughts from spinning out of control. The fact was, there were no sure conclusions to draw from any of it, not until Tobias could tell us where he'd been and what had happened. I took Tobias's hand in mine.

“It's going to be okay,” I said, although I wasn't sure who I was trying to convince, him or me. Didn't much matter; either way, I was being disingenuously optimistic, and he didn't seem to be listening, anyway.

There was a quick knock at the door, but before I could get up to answer it, Desmond was already inside.

“Eliot?” he said, his voice taut. He rushed over to me, and froze once he came around the couch and saw who was sitting there. The stark worry on his face subsided, and with work to be done, he was all business. He snapped a finger in front of Seamus's nose, and Seamus jumped down off the couch. Desmond sat where Seamus had been and put his hand on Tobias's shoulder. “What happened?”

“He just knocked on the door, and he was like this.”

Desmond set his briefcase down next to Tobias and flicked it open. “When?”

“I called you the second I got him to the couch. He's disoriented, sensitive to light, I was worried that maybe he'd been given…” I stopped. This was no time to be coy. “There's a memory potion the agencies used to use a lot. I can't remember everything that's in it, but I think it had something called…” I closed my eyes and tried to remember. “I want to say beets … stock? Something like that?”

“Bayatsah tsvyetok?”
he said quickly, and looked at me for my response.

I shrugged, frustrated. “Gesundheit. I don't know what you just said.”

“Bayatsah tsvyetok,”
he said again, a little slower. “It's Russian. Is that what he used?”

“Yeah … maybe. I don't know. It was a long time ago. What is it? Is it yellow, ugly, kinda weedy-looking?”

Desmond sighed. “Yes. So are about twelve other things. I can't counteract anything if I don't know for certain what he's been given. You suspect your father had something to do with this?”

Guilt stabbed through me, even though I knew none of this was my doing or my fault. “He wanted to know what he could do to prove himself to me. I told him to send Tobias back to Liv. It was all I could think of.”

Desmond watched me for a moment, and I could see gears churning madly behind his eyes, but I had no idea what they were coming up with. Before I could ask, there was another knock on the door. Desmond stood up, on alert, and I put my hand on his shoulder.

“I called Stacy and told her to bring Liv,” I said.

He looked at Tobias, and then at me. “Bugger.”

“I
had
to call her.”

He nodded, his expression contrite. “Of course you did,” he said, and nodded toward the door.

I walked over and turned the knob. Liv's hair was wet; she must have been in the shower when Stacy came to get her. Behind Liv, Stacy stood with her arms crossed over her stomach, and a tall man with messy brown hair, a crooked nose, and wide, kind eyes stood with his arm around Stacy's waist. I took him to be Leo.

“Hi,” I said.

“Are you okay?” Liv reached out and touched my arm. “Stacy said you needed to see me?”

I stepped back to let her in. She moved inside, looking confused. She said, “Hello, Desmond,” with a question in her voice, and then she froze. A sound caught in her throat and she looked at me, and I said, “He just showed up on my doorstep.” Liv's eyes filled with tears and I added, “He's a little disoriented,” which was the understatement of the year, but when she moved closer and said, “Tobias?” he turned his head toward her, just a little. I looked at Stacy and Leo, both of them staring at me, a thousand questions in their eyes, but all I could say was, “I don't know.”

Seamus had relocated to the love seat in the corner, and I shoved him over and sat down next to him, trying to disappear into the scenery as Liv sat down next to Tobias. I felt voyeuristic, but I couldn't look away, either. She didn't touch him immediately, just stared at him wide-eyed, tears absently dropping from her lashes. She looked as if she was afraid that it was all an illusion, and that if she touched him, he'd disappear.

“Tobias?” she said again, her voice cracking in a million places, and he turned to look at her. His eyes seemed unable to focus, but he was trying.

She was bringing him back.

She reached out and touched his face, laughing a sad laugh through her tears. “You have a beard.” She sniffed, and ran her hand through his hair. “I've never seen you with a beard.”

His eyes squinted a bit as he looked at her, the way they'd squinted in the sun earlier.

“Liv?” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Liv nodded and burst into violent, shaking tears. Tobias reached out for her as best he could and she fell into his arms. Desmond, who had been standing quietly by the wall, stepped forward.

“Liv, I think maybe Tobias should lie down.”

Desmond glanced at me for permission. I nodded, and he led both Tobias and Liv down the hallway to my room. I grabbed Seamus's collar and walked him over to where Stacy and Leo were standing. Stacy's eyes were red-rimmed; Leo's were dry but harried-looking, and his grip around Stacy's waist was visibly tight.